A brief history of the YSA

The YSA was founded in 1947 as a forum for anaesthetists in Yorkshire to meet and share experiences and knowledge. Speakers from outside the region were invited to lecture at regular evening meetings during the university academic year. The first President was Dr. Sampson Thompson Rowling, one of the founders of academic anaesthesia in Leeds, and by 1960 the Society was well established. The Presidential medal was struck in this year and presented to the Society by Dr Finnie at the end of his term of office as President. All consultant anaesthetists working in Yorkshire were eligible for full membership if proposed and seconded by a member and full members paid a small subscription which paid the expenses and the lecture fees for the speakers. Trainees were eligible for trainee membership and not required to pay a subscription. These arrangements continue to this day.

The All Day Meeting, which rotates round the hospitals in Yorkshire, is one of the highlights of the annual programme and takes place on a Saturday in April each year. In recent years the YSA and the Section of Anaesthesia of the Manchester Medical Society have run a joint All Day Meeting every second year. Following the establishment of the University Department of Anaesthesia it became traditional for one of the evening meetings to be devoted to presentations by members of the UDA about their research. In the 1980s a Registrars’ Essay Prize was established with the winner presenting at the University Department Meeting. In 1991 one of the evening sessions was set aside for registrar presentations at which a prize was presented for the best one. This was renamed as the Martin Boylan  Prize in 1998 following the premature death of Martin who was a former Honorary Secretary of the Society. This is the only session that is still held in the evening.

In 2000 the dwindling attendance at evening meetings led to a change in the timing of the meetings with a half day meeting being held to coincide with the audit afternoon in May. This meeting was so successful that in the following year it was agreed that instead of eight evening meetings three afternoon meetings would be held each year in addition to the All Day Meeting and the Trainees’ Prize meeting. These arrangements continue to the present. One meeting is run by the Academic Unit of  Anaesthesia in Leeds, one is held to coincide with the afternoon audit meeting in May and the third is held in October at a hospital outside Leeds, currently Bradford. A lecture in memory of the first President of the Society, Dr Sampson Thomson Rowling, has been endowed by his son and will be delivered at the May or October meetings each year.

Ed Moss 

March 2005