Liverpool has led the way in recognising and furthering the status of operating department assistants and practitioners (ODA/Ps). Two young men, Jack Probert and Bill Kehoe, were theatre technicians in the armed forces during the Second World War. After the war they came to Walton Hospital, Liverpool, and provided for the anaesthetists there a service that was virtually unknown elsewhere. They were instrumental in founding a Society for Anaesthetic Technicians, with its journal ‘Technic’, which has become the Journal of Operating Department Practice. The anaesthetic trainees from Walton (and I was fortunate to be one of them) became consultants elsewhere and were then able to insist on properly trained assistants in the anaesthetic room. The concept that anaesthetists required skilled assistance was gradually and eventually accepted by the UK Department of Health and local administrators. By the mid 1980s, via insistence and persistence, anaesthetists in many hospitals had achieved suitable levels of assistance at the standards that were deemed to be essential by the Association of Anaesthetists and the Faculty of Anaesthetists. Sad that the achievement of this had to be confrontational.

Although the necessity of trained help for anaesthetists was accepted, there were still limitations in the training available for ODAs. What was needed was an energetic impetus and leadership from among the ODAs (later to be called ODPs) who would enhance academic credibility by acquisition of higher academic qualifications and then help to establish higher educational facilities for the profession.