Matthew is a doctor training in anaesthesia in London. He is specialising in anaesthesia for neurosurgery. He gained his Fellowship of the Royal College of Anaesthetists (FRCA) in 2021.

Alongside his clinical work, Matthew is interested in how patients think about and experience anaesthesia. Surgery is relatively easy to comprehend for patients, and the intent of even complex operations can be explained with pictures and diagrams. Anaesthesia, and general anaesthesia particularly, is more nebulous.

Patient understanding of anaesthesia is often less well developed than their understanding of the operation they need an anaesthetic for. You might not think that matters much, but as medicine tries to focus on the patient (“patient-centred care”), what patients understand about their options becomes increasingly important. Some operations require general anaesthesia, but others might be possible with the patient awake utilising a different mode of anaesthesia altogether- caesarean sections for childbirth are a good example of this. For patients to make decisions about their own care, they need to know what the options are, and what benefits and risks each option presents.

Matthew is interested in exploring how storytelling can support wider patient education about the fundamentals of anaesthesia. Ether/Or is an example of how compelling historical narratives can be used to develop understanding of more complex issues facing anaesthesia today.