Dr Lila Dinner, Regional Adviser and Head of North Central School of Anaesthesia, is standing for election to the Council of the Royal College of Anaesthetists this autumn. Many of you will know her and may even want to support her in this.

Lila has been a trainee and Consultant in the School and has worked hard to ensure that each trainee gets their rotation tailored to suit their individual and professional needs.

My interests are in training, enhancing our professional status and trying to rebalance the inequalities that are still too widespread. We have a workforce crisis looming but aren’t high up the political priority list. We should drive the agenda and fight for the integrity, professionalism and unity of our specialty. We need imaginative solutions and real collaborative working to address the workforce issues, the role of the anaesthetist in and out of theatre and to balance service and training and how we see ourselves in a harsher external climate. We are in danger of becoming victims of our own success and talking ourselves out of a career most of us are rightly proud of. We fail to include and encourage those from other training backgrounds sufficiently, wasting that talent when we can’t staff our hospitals. Our greatest asset is people – highly skilled and trained with patient safety running through the marrow of our specialty. I have energy and passion to hold our own and others to account. London STC Less than Full Time Specialty Adviser 2002-7, TPD Central London School 2007-12, RA 2012-. Trust Appraisal Lead NCCG doctors. NHS England Responsible Officer Appraiser and lead High Level RO QA Visits.

The School has a long history of producing Council members – providing the only female President, an immediate past Vice President and a number of other Council members, both as trainee reps and from the consultant body. If you would like to support her, voting opens on the 24th October either electronically or by post.