Dr Ed Mariano, Professor at Stanford University School of Medicine and Chief of the Anesthesiology and Perioperative Care Service at the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System

Dr. Mariano is a Professor at Stanford University School of Medicine and Chief of the Anesthesiology and Perioperative Care Service at the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System.  He has developed techniques and patient care pathways to improve pain management, patient safety, and other surgical outcomes and has published over 200 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters.  He has held leadership positions in the American Society of Anesthesiologists, California Society of Anesthesiologists, and American Society of Regional Anesthesia and Pain Medicine.  He is a recipient of the Veteran Health Administration’s John D. Chase Award for Physician Executives Excellence and has worked on key national healthcare initiatives including the accreditation of regional anesthesiology and acute pain medicine fellowships, revision of hospital-based standards on pain assessment and management, development of quality and cost measures in perioperative care, and the National Academy of Medicine Action Collaborative Countering the U.S. Opioid Epidemic.

Prof Carol Peden, Professor of Anesthesiology, Chair ASA Perioperative Brain Health Initiative

Professor Carol Peden MB ChB, MD (Res), FRCA, FFICM, MPH is an Adjunct Professor of Anesthesiology at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and at the University of Pennsylvania and is Chair of the American Society of Anesthesiologists Perioperative Brain Heath Initiative. She has expertise in designing and leading improvement and innovation projects around the world and was named Public Health Innovator of the year in 2016 by Harvard School of Public Health for her work to improve outcomes in high risk surgical patients.  She gained her quality improvement fellowship at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) in Boston and with the Health Foundation in London. She was a co-founder of the National Emergency Laparotomy Audit (NELA), is a board member of the International ERAS USA Board and an Editor of the Quality Improvement Compendium of the Royal College of Anaesthetists.  She has been awarded the Macintosh Professorship and the Humphry Davy medal by the Royal College of Anaesthetists.

Prof Rachel Collis, Obstetric Anaesthetist Consultant, University Hospital of Wales

Rachel Collis: Qualified from St Bartholomew’s Hospital, London University in 1986. After training in anaesthesia in the major teaching hospitals around London, she developed a passion for obstetric anaesthesia whilst working as a specialist registrar at Queen Charlottes Hospital. Her great mentor, Barbara Morgan, said “question everything” which has stayed with her and influenced her career. She moved to Cardiff in 1997 to take up a consultant post with a special interest in obstetric anaesthesia at The University Hospital of Wales. 

She has a special interest in the management of the high risk parturient and has led on multiple quality improvement initiatives, including outcomes of post-partum haemorrhage (PPH) and the early recognition and management of maternal sepsis. 

She has a long-standing interest in obstetric anaesthetic research and has published regularly in this area since 1993. Over the past 10-years she has published on the management of PPH focusing on replacement of coagulation products, the use of point of care coagulation monitoring and improving PPH outcomes through multidisciplinary team behaviour. Her PPH research continues and in addition she is now collaborating with Cardiff University on a major new project looking at potential biomarkers in maternal sepsis. 

Her interests outside medicine are walking and painting.