In this second interview with Dr Max Blythe, Dr Aileen Adams discusses her career from 1957 when she returned to England from Boston. She speaks of taking up a temporary appointment at Oxford's Radcliffe Infirmary, at the invitation of Robert Macintosh, the first Nuffield Professor of Anaesthetics of the University of Oxford. She discusses working with the cardiothoracic surgeon and Nuffield Professor of Surgery, Philip Allison, at a time of change from closed to open cardiac surgery. There follows a discussion of the development of anaesthesia as a specialty in the fifties and sixties, including the introduction of intensive care units administered by anaesthetists. Among the people she mentions from her Oxford years are the anaesthetist Roger Bryce-Smith, the neurosurgeon Joseph Pennybacker and the neuroanaesthetist Olive Jones. She also speaks of the neurologist J M K Spalding and the anaesthetist Alex Crampton Smith who founded the Oxford Respiratory Unit, where the technique of mechanical intermittent positive pressure ventilation was developed for the treatment of respiratory failure. The interview moves to a six-month period spent teaching on a WHO course at the Anaesthesiology Centre in Copenhagen, followed by her appointment in 1960 as consultant anaesthetist at Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge. Finally, she speaks of her involvement with the neuro unit at Cambridge, founded by Walpole Lewin.
The Radcliffe Infirmary Oxford, the Nuffield Department of Anaesthetics,Sir Robert Macintosh, Philip Allison, Roger Bryce-Smith, Joseph Pennybacker,Olive Jones, Alex Crampton Smith, Addenbrooke's Hospital Cambridge.
Anaesthesia,
vid-002, MSVA_143
Permanent link to this resource: https://doi.org/10.24384/000017
Adams, AileenBlythe, Max
Learning Resources
Original artefact: 1996 RADAR resource: 2017
Oxford, UK
© Oxford Brookes University; The Royal College of Physicians; The Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland; The Royal College of Anaesthetists Published by Oxford Brookes UniversityAll rights reserved.