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P063 The Bloc-Tor. enhancing regional anaesthesia training for anaesthetic residents

rapm · 2025-09-10 · canonical JSON source

5 visible annotations · policy: published · automated confidence ≥ 75.00%

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Background and Aims As a resident anaesthetist, the teaching of and exposure to regional anaesthesia (RA) can be unstructured and ad hoc. The Bloc-Tor (Block doctor) was designed to enhance residents’ RA experience and minimise the number of missed RA training opportunities. Resident anaesthetists in the Mersey deanery were surveyed to find out attitudes to RA teaching and confidence. Of the 53 responders, over 50% weren’t getting regular RA opportunities, over 60% felt under-confident in their abilities and over 95% supported the Bloc-Tor concept.Methods The Bloc-Tor was implemented at Countess of Chester Hospital, a 600-bed district general hospital (DGH) with 15 anaesthetic residents. Each day a resident is allocated to the Bloc-Tor role. They are allocated to an operating list, but their main responsibility is to seek out learning opportunities to practice RA in theatres which don’t already have a resident allocated to them.Results A post implementation survey was conducted after three weeks. Of 8 responders there were 12 days of Bloc-Tor (80% response rate) and a total of 18 extra blocks performed (range 1 – 3 per day). Feedback from residents and consultants was overwhelmingly positive.Conclusions The Bloc-Tor has the ability to vastly increase exposure to RA for rotating residents without increasing cost, staffing or consultant workload. The Future: The Bloc-tor is now established at Countess of Chester Hospital and will be rolled out at two other large (DGHs) in the region. Our aim is for this role to be incorporated all anaesthetic departments within Mersey and demonstrate an increase in resident confidence with RA.