New Board 2026: Aamer Ahmed  

Prof. Aamer Ahmed — ESAIC Board Member 2026
In this interview, Prof. Aamer Ahmed shares his vision, priorities, and motivations for his ESAIC mandate, highlighting how he aims to advance education, research, leadership, and collaboration across European anaesthesiology and intensive care.

What motivates you to take on this role with ESAIC, and what do you hope to achieve during your mandate? 

First a little bit about me: I have been involved with the ESAIC since 1989, when I proudly presented my very first scientific poster here. Since then, I have contributed to the Society’s scientific and political mission, starting as a subcommittee member of the haemostasis and transfusion committee and the equipment and monitoring committees.  

I developed and contributed to the hands-on Pre-congress workshops on ultrasound when it first became popular, as well as to point-of-care testing workshops. I was then appointed to chair the Media (now Communications) committee, where I established the e-newsletter from a paper format, redeveloped the ESAIC website, and helped grow our membership.  

I contributed to the scientific programmes of Euroanaesthesia and its sister Focus meetings each year, established our social media presence, and encouraged our trainee anaesthesiologists to join. I have co-authored three of the major guidelines that shape our clinical practice.  

I was elected to the Council to represent the UK, and then to the Nominations Committee, where I have helped select the best candidates for positions in ESAIC. I have since had the honour to be elected to the Board. I hold the Society’s founding principles very dear to my heart and am proud to see us grow into the successful organisation we are today.  

I love working for the ESAIC, seeking directions from the Council members, and for you, our members, for whom we exist. As a Board member, I hope to continue the strong tradition we have of cross-European collaboration and raising awareness of our speciality, and politically strengthen us with other specialities and the EU. We have a profound role in developing patient safety and quality of care, and we are the leading society in Europe. During my tenure, I hope to improve our links with industry, without whom we could not do our jobs in the theatre and ICU, and which I see as a mutually beneficial relationship.  

Which aspects of ESAIC’s mission and ongoing initiatives are you most passionate about — and why? 

I firmly believe in the tenets of pursuing excellence in what we do and selecting officers and candidates based on merit, regardless of their backgrounds, sex or nationality. We support them in improving our research and education output, increasing our membership by making us attractive to both residents and seniors, and increasing our interest amongst the allied health professionals we work with every day. I also see us expanding our outreach to other societies across the world, both eastwards and westwards. The latest advances in medicine come when we work collaboratively, and we have seen how the world came together during the COVID-19 pandemic to develop vaccines regardless of borders. I would be delighted to hear from as many of you as possible and to receive your ideas for how you would like to shape our society together. 

What inspired you to pursue a career in anaesthesiology, and what else should people know about you outside of work? 

I have always been fascinated by numbers, physiology and pharmacology, and I enjoy combining strategic thinking with hands-on action in the operating theatre. I love leading a team and doing my best for patients, relieving pain and suffering. Early in my career, a mentor during my anaesthesiology attachment inspired me with their ability to put patients at ease and their passion for controlling physiology to help patients. Their guidance continued to shape my professional path. 

Outside of work, I have a few passions that might surprise people. I am an avid petrolhead and enjoy racing performance cars, which gives me a different kind of adrenaline rush. I also love music, particularly blues rock and heavy metal, and travelling to explore new cultures and cuisines. These hobbies help me unwind and maintain balance between a demanding career and personal life. 

If I were not working in medicine, I could see myself as a pilot or an investment banker, both fields that combine precision, strategy and calculated risk. I am endlessly curious about innovation and fascinated by how predictive technologies and strategic thinking shape the future, whether in healthcare or beyond. 

What do you see as the main challenges and opportunities for ESAIC over the next few years, and how do you plan to address them in your role? 

In our society, from its inception, it hasn’t been easy to blend the influence of politics from East and West with the science and art of what we do. Every country has its own health system, and our working environment can vary widely. We do, however, face many common pressures together, such as managing stress and burnout, sometimes strained relationships with surgical colleagues and hospital management and the impetus to “do more with less”. Society quite rightly expects its physicians to deliver in times of need, and our challenge is to step up to this role amid a worldwide shortage of physicians, particularly anaesthesiologists and intensivists.  

I see an opportunity to raise the profile of what we do as perioperative physicians and to improve health strategies through preoperative optimisation. We can work collaboratively with our surgical colleagues and, in the bigger picture for our society, consider expanding our outreach to liaise with other similar societies and surgical specialist societies to hold joint sessions during our conferences. 

Strategically, our surgeons are increasingly heading toward AI-assisted robotic and remote surgery. Politically, I would like to see us strengthen our influence with the EU and with administering bodies so that we can collect “big data” and apply data science to explore hitherto unexplained physiology. I want to see a tighter pursuit of excellence in patient safety standards and quality of care in conjunction with our industry colleagues. As the largest hospital speciality, we need to carefully consider workforce issues with political pressures to increase nurse-led anaesthesia and physician assistants, and how we resist them. To an extent, we are victims of our own success, as anaesthesia has become safer. It appears to the outside world that anyone can do what we do with limited training. Still, as in aviation, our real value only becomes apparent when something out of the ordinary happens, and that is what we train for. I am fortunate to be the upcoming President of the Association for Cardiothoracic Anaesthesia and Critical Care (ACTACC) in the UK, where we face similar workforce and political issues and are tackling them in a politically sensitive manner. 

How will you balance your ESAIC commitments with your clinical or professional duties, and what support or collaboration would you like from colleagues to succeed? 

To deliver leadership, one needs to engage those who have elected you. I am open to hearing new ideas and suggestions from our membership, and I plan to set aside protected time between my clinical work to develop this role. Inevitably, these things encroach upon personal time as well, but if you enjoy the work, then it ceases to be work anymore! I hope to deliver what you have elected me to do and exceed your expectations. I hold many portfolios as a clinician, researcher, academic, teacher, and leader, and as a medic, we learn to master our time management perhaps better than most. I seek everyone’s support in offering ideas and directions for where you would like to see your society go, and I will endeavour to help us get there. Please feel free to approach me; I would be delighted to meet you.