Volunteering | Association of Anaesthetists
Register
Become a member

Volunteering

HomeGet involvedVolunteering

Voluntary roles

Information on all available voluntary roles can be viewed here.

Heritage Centre

The Anaesthesia Heritage Centre tells the remarkable story of anaesthesia, from its first public demonstration in 1846 to the modern day. Our volunteers provide invaluable support to the Heritage Centre. Trainees help us deliver our informal learning programme with families, social mobility organisations and summer medical schools, and as we are being asked to deliver more workshops, we need more volunteers.

You might be interested to know that this work can help you meet some of your curriculum competencies. Evidence can be provided and uploaded to the Lifelong Learning Platform, which is particularly useful for the Education and Training domains.

If you would like to inspire young people to study anaesthesia and are comfortable either presenting or leading practical ‘hands on activities’, then do get in touch [email protected].

Volunteering at the Heritage Centre

The Anaesthesia Heritage Centre relies on its volunteers to enrich the service offered to its visitors, and we are very grateful for their help. Last year we received over 1,000 visitors, and we hope to build on that with their assistance.

Volunteers are involved in the following areas:

  • Updating the information on our collections' databases
  • Historical research – you don’t always need to travel to London to do this. Some can be done by email
  • Answering enquiries from researchers
  • Giving tours, talks and object handling for group and school visits
  • Oral history interviews: carrying out the interviews and editing the recordings
  • Inventorying objects in the museum, rare book collection and archives, as well as in our off-site storage facilities
  • Assisting with exhibits at events, such as WSM and Annual Congress
  • Helping to curate temporary and travelling exhibitions

All volunteers receive travelling expenses and lunch as well as training in the various aspects of the work.

If you're interested in volunteering with the Heritage Centre, please email [email protected].

Organising an Association seminar or Core Topics

You may be aware that the Associations runs an extensive Education programme, part of this is a series of seminars held at 21 Portland place and regional Core Topics. We are always looking for new content ideas, so if you have an idea and would like to organise a seminar or Core Topics event, please contact [email protected].

Quality Assurance panel

Did you know that the Association offers a wide range of educational content through its on-line learning platform Learn@. Much of content is quality assured before it is published on-line. The Association has a Quality Assurance Panel, to assist with this process. We anticipate 5-6 videos to review per Panel member during the few weeks following each conference, using a standardised assessment template. Training/support will be available as appropriate/required. If you are interested in this type of volunteer work, please email [email protected].

Become a mentor

The Association is always looking for volunteers to become part of our mentoring scheme. Find out more about the scheme and how to apply to become a mentor here.

Environmental Champion network

We are looking for at least on anaesthetist to volunteer from every hospital in the UK & Ireland to become an Environmental Champion. If you are interested in becoming an Environmental Champion click here for more information.

Undergraduate elective assessor panel

The Association of Anaesthetists makes two types of undergraduate awards – undergraduate elective funding twice per year and the annual Wylie undergraduate essay prize.

In the elective funding rounds, awards of up to £750 are made towards a medical student elective period where preference is given to those applicants who can show the relevance of their intended elective to anaesthesia, intensive care or pain relief. We ask applicants to note our particular interest in projects based in developing countries. The Wylie essay is awarded each year for a 1000-word essay on a topic chosen annually by the Heritage, Research & Innovation Committee.

We are seeking to add to its panel of assessors (consultants, SAS doctors and trainees) with a clear interest in undergraduate medical education to support them in reviewing and scoring the applications for these awards.

Interested candidates should apply to [email protected] with a covering letter and a personal statement of up to 300 words describing their interest in undergraduate medical education.

SAFE volunteering

Find out more about volunteering to become a SAFE trainer and run SAFE courses in lower resource countries. If you'd like to become a SAFE trainer and run a SAFE course, you must do one of our Train-the-Trainers courses. Contact our events team to find out more.

Perioperative Allergy Network

This is a multidisciplinary forum for anaesthetists, allergists and immunologists who work in this field, or are interested in doing so. It is UK-wide network created jointly by the Association, the British Society for Allergy and Clinical Immunology (BSACI) and the British Society of Immunologists Clinical Immunology Professional Network. For more information click here,