New Zealand fellow knighted in King's Birthday Honours
New Zealand fellow Dr Paul Baker says he is "privileged and honoured" to be named a Knight Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the King's Birthday Honours, for services to health.
Sir Paul was a foundation consultant anaesthetist at Starship Children’s Hospital in Auckland, and has worked for more than 40 years as a paediatric anaesthetist and airway management specialist.
He says in accepting the honour he hopes it reflects on both anaesthesia and airway management.
“I feel very privileged and honoured to receive this award. In doing so, I hope it will reflect on my specialty of anaesthesia, and my special interest of airway management. These are the activities which deserve attention.”
Sir Paul is considered New Zealand’s leading authority on airway management, and in 1996 significantly advanced patient safety by creating AirwaySkills, the first training program in the southern hemisphere teaching the management of difficult airways.
Through AirwaySkills, he has personally trained more than 5000 anaesthetists, emergency physicians and intensive care doctors.
“It is encouraging to hear that many of the attendees have since become keen teachers and airway leads themselves,” he says.
In 2004 he led a team of 26 clinicians to successfully perform New Zealand’s first ex utero intrapartum treatment (EXIT) procedure, one of the most high-risk and technically demanding operations in modern medicine.
Sir Paul founded the medical innovation company Airway Limited in 2006. He led the invention of ORSIM, a virtual reality bronchoscopy training simulator, now used in more than 40 countries and at Harvard, Oxford and Yale universities.
He has authored or co-authored 96 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters on airway safety, paediatric airway management and medical ethics.
His research led to the adoption of national equipment standards, ensuring every operating theatre is equipped to manage difficult airways.
Sir Paul has chaired the international committee of the World Airway Management Meeting and served as President of the Society for Airway Management USA.
“I believe collaboration is the way forward and it has been a privilege to work with a global community of airway experts,” he says.
That collaboration is set to continue into the future as Sir Paul works through the Society for Airway Management (SAM) to establish a national airway lead network in the United States.
He is also working with SAM colleagues on two research projects to define the efficacy of airway leads.
