Dr Helgi Johannsson
Welcome to my page
I have been a consultant anaesthetist at Imperial College Healthcare since 2007, having trained at St Bartholomew’s, then anaesthetic training in North and East London. My clinical work is based at St Mary’s and Hammersmith hospitals and includes a wide variety of disciplines, including trauma care, oesophagogastric surgery, obstetrics, bariatrics.
My other interests include education, social media and medicine, music and exercise. I have been in many leadership roles, including clinical director of anaesthesia and intensive care, associate medical director for education at Imperial, director of anaesthesia for MSI choices and most recently Vice-President of the Royal College of Anaesthetists.
I have long kept a blog, on two different providers, the first being deleted a few years ago.
This website is simply to make access to my writing easier and protect it from being deleted on a corporate whim.
Perioperative oxygen and surgical site infection
The WHO write a crazy guideline, I blog about it, guideline author attacks me in the comments, and two years later the evidence for it is torn to shreds in the journals. Turns out I was right.
Refilling The Tank
This thought process has helped me a lot in the last year - we are allowed to gain satisfaction from difficult conversations.
How can we stay resilient in difficult work times?
Resilience is as important now as it was then…
Junior doctors in anaesthesia - the canary in the coal mine?
Written around the time of the junior doctor strike.
Please wipe the phrase ‘nil-by-mouth from midnight’ from your vocabulary.
Please don’t say Nil By Mouth. It’s not a thing. Don’t make your patients’ lives any more miserable than they need to be!
Does it get better?
During the blackest times of junior doctoring, please remember things do get better!
Confessions of an anaesthetist - wrong drug, wrong route.
We all make mistakes - here’s one of mine.
Anaesthesia for the medical student.
Ever wondered how to gain the most out of your anaesthetic placement? Look no further.