Anaesthetists under pressure of 'Olympic athletes'

Anaesthetists say they face extreme pressures in their job. Photo / John Stone

Anaesthetists deal with mental stress similar to that of highly trained soldiers and top-level athletes and should be given the same sort of training, anaesthetists say.

Australian anaesthetist Dr Geoff Healy and Welsh colleague Dr Mark Stacey discussed the stresses faced by anaesthetists at a meeting of the Australia and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists yesterday.

Dr Healy has been monitoring the heart rates of anaesthetists, doctors and paramedics - and deliberately putting the professionals in stressful environments - at his rescue helicopter service and hospital in Sydney.

He measured their responses before and after they had undergone training to deal with extreme mental stress.

"We have been seeing a definite trend towards improved performance and higher subjective performance ratings with the skills we have been teaching," Dr Healy said.

"The way we think has a massive influence on our outcomes of task performance, diagnosis, motor skills and interaction with other human beings."

Dr Stacey said the body's stress response was the same as an "Olympic athlete or an army soldier - or a doctor".

"We, as experienced, highly trained clinicians, dealing with life or death circumstances every day, are essentially like the elite athletes," he said.

He said medical professionals needed to understand their bodies deal with stress to learn strategies to control it and ultimately to improve performance.

- NZME