Family Practice Anesthetists Network

The Family Practice Anesthesia (FPA) Network is a collegial provincial network that connects family practice anaesthetists (FPAs) from across British Columbia. Network members discuss and disseminate critical information related to their practices, including clinical questions, recruitment and retention, current political issues, and opportunities for continuing medical education.

The BC Anesthesiologists’ Society has been increasingly supportive of FPA practices in Rural BC.  It is imperative that we nurture this relationship in order to improve relationships between specialists and FPAs.  Through collaborative relationships with our specialist colleagues there are many opportunities to address surgical backlogs by better utilization of rural surgical facilities and the FPA workforce. Dr. Kirk McCarroll plans to continue his work on the board of the BCAS, the economics committee and the education committee with that goal in mind. 

The network continues to grow.  A key social and educational part of this is the FPA conference.  We will repeat this again in the fall.  Work has already begun on this with collaboration with UBC CPD. 

There are also discussions about repeating the journal club that was a real success in the fall of 2023.  We are hoping to develop this in the spring.  

A new initiative that physician lead, Dr. Kirk McCarroll, would like to start, in conjunction with others at RCCbc, is in the field of planetary health. Dr. McCarroll said: “There are many organizations currently working on reducing the carbon footprint of healthcare and it is an opportune time to leverage the connections we have developed through the FPA network to become part of these initiatives.  Surgical services represent a disproportionately large impact on planetary health, and it is essential that we in the perioperative domain take action on reducing our footprint.”