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BIOGRAPHY:

I studied medicine at the University of Oxford, and subsequently trained in anaesthesia in Birmingham and Oxford. I now practise as an NHS consultant in the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, with roles in education and simulation. Throughout my training and consultant career I have maintained a strong interest in the provision of safe anaesthesia in low-income settings, and have ongoing commitments to clinical, training and research projects in sub-Saharan Africa.

Hilary Edgcombe

BM, BCh (Oxon), FRCA (Lon), MSc Global Health (KCL)


Consultant Anaesthetist

Research and training in global anaesthesia

AREAS OF INTEREST

  • The anaesthetic workforce network in low-resource settings
  • Training in global anaesthesia
  • Director of the "Anaesthesia in Developing Countries" course, Oxford/Uganda

Safe anaesthesia is a clear prerequisite for safe surgery worldwide. Billions remain unable to access life-saving operations: an important contributor to this problem is a lack of reliable anaesthetic services.

My previous work focused on the experience of non-physician anaesthesia providers in sub-Saharan Africa,  exploring how well their training prepares them for practice and the nature of their professional networks. I was also clinical lead for the LIFE project (with team members from Kenya, the Centre for Tropical Medicine and the Department of Education in Oxford), developing novel smartphone-based training tools for health workers in low-resource settings between 2016 and 2022. I am now developing research in the relevance of networks to the anaesthesia workforce in low-resource contexts.

I am also a founding and active member of the Oxford Global Surgery Group committee. As a group, we link clinicians and researchers in Oxford who have global surgical health interests at termly networking meetings, offer a global surgery special study module for medical students and an internationally popular short academic course in global surgery for anaesthetists, obstetricians and surgeons held annually.