History repeats itself: Sister anaesthetists in the Second World War – Lessons from the past

During the Second World War, acute shortages of medically qualified personnel prompted Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge to train experienced nursing sisters to administer anaesthetics. Drawing on material from the Addenbrooke’s archives, personal memoirs of participants, records from hospitals in Norwich and Ipswich, and contemporaneous correspondence published in the British Medical Journal and the Lancet , this article examines the development, professional reception, and eventual cessation of the Sister Anaesthetist scheme at Addenbrooke’s Hospital. This scheme was formally proposed in May 1940, and modelled on an existing programme which had been established at the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital almost two decades previously. Despite the requirement for a structured 6-month apprenticeship and ongoing evidence of clinical competency by those enrolled, the scheme generated fierce opposition from local Honorary Anaesthetists, culminating in a collective threat of resignation in June 1941. Sister Anaesthetists were consistently framed as a temporary emergency measure and their employment formally ended in May 1946 when a medically qualified Resident Anaesthetist was appointed. We briefly consider how these historical patterns – pragmatic necessity versus professional identity, training variability, medicolegal uncertainty, and the contested temporariness of non-physician roles – resonate with present-day discussions surrounding Anaesthesia Associates in the United Kingdom.