Anaesthetist

• Worked incredibly hard and always did my best to further the interests of BAH as a hospital, its traditions and all the staff. 
• Director of Trauma Services from late 1987 to 1990, I was accused of being the lackey of ‘management’. 
• My proudest achievement was my book ‘Handbook of Emergency Anaesthesia’ published by Butterworths in 1983. 
• At the time, except at the Acci, on-call anaesthetic trainees were never supported in the hospital by the consultant on-call. The book was written for trainees who were faced with a clinical problem e.g. cyanosis or unexplained hypotension and gave practical advice about how to decide the cause of the problem and how to treat it. 
• A paper that was well received was written with Martyn Parker entitled Mortality after spinal and general anaesthesia for surgical fixation of hip fractures (Anaesthesia 1994, 49, 237 – 240). 
• Followed approximately 1000 patients treated at BAH and subsequently Kettering as well. At the time this was the largest study on the subject ever published. 
• Overall, the type of anaesthetic did not affect outcome and we surmised that a good outcome could be achieved by anaesthetists with experience who were free to choose whatever technique they thought best for their patient. 
• We demonstrated was the type of fracture and hence its treatment did not, influence outcome. The supposed relationship between type of surgery and outcome was actually related to the patient’s physical and physiological fitness with certain operations being favoured for those who were less fit and thus being blamed for a poorer outcome.
• In 1989 became a member of the newly formed International Trauma Anaesthesia and Critical Care Society (ITACCS) and to give a talk about the Acci at their annual conference. This introduced Anne to trauma anaesthetists from around the world which enabled her to spread the Acci message through subsequent presentations and papers
• Research into fracture fixation – it did not matter how many fractures were fixed early for there to be apparent benefit. I questioned then whether something other than the timing of surgery might be influencing results and suggested that it could be something to do with anaesthesia. I hypothesised that the benefit might be because they resuscitated patients adequately before administering anaesthesia whereas they had no early involvement with patients not scheduled for surgery until later by which time the effect of lack of adequate resuscitation had already played a part in producing a poorer outcome.
• The editor of the European Journal of Emergency Medicine insisted I write up my thoughts and duly published my paper (Does early fixation of fractures reduce

 mortality in severely injured patients? European Journal of Emergency Medicine 1994, 1, 55 – 61).

Anne was an accomplished anaesthetist, totally committed to her job, her patients and known for excellent support, care and compassion when dealing with relatives.