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Summary Statement Process-oriented in situ simulation has been gaining widespread acceptance in the evaluation of the safety of new healthcare teams and facilities. In this article, we highlight learning points from our proactive use of in situ simulation as part of plan-do-study-act cycles to ensure operating room facility preparedness for COVID-19 outbreak. We found in situ simulation to be a valuable tool in disease outbreak preparedness, allowing us to ensure proper use of personal protective equipment and protocol adherence, and to identify latent safety threats and novel problems that were not apparent in the initial planning stage. Through this, we could refine our workflow and operating room setup to provide timely surgical interventions for potential COVID-19 patients in our hospital while keeping our staff and patients safe. Running a simulation may be time and resource intensive, but it is a small price to pay if it can help prevent disease spread in an outbreak.

Carotid body tumours (CBT) are extremely rare neoplasms that arise from chemoreceptor cells at the bifurcation of the carotid artery. This rarity poses a challenge for the anaesthetist when dealing with surgeries for the removal of CBT. Reports of associated perioperative morbidity range from twenty to forty percent. This paper reviews the perioperative anaesthetic management of CBT patients and challenges in our institution's 20 year experience on 13 surgical CBT resections.

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