Paul Baker

Sir Paul Andrew Baker is a New Zealand anaesthetist. An associate professor at the University of Auckland, he researches airway management in both adults and children, with a particular focus on emergency airway management, education and ethics.

Education Baker studied medicine at the University of Auckland, graduating Bachelor of Human Biology, Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery in 1980, before completing specialist anaesthesiology training in 1986. He later earned a Doctor of Medicine degree, also from Auckland, with a 2013 thesis, Improving the Quality and Safety of Airway Management, supervised by Brian Anderson, John Thompson and Alan Merry.

Career Baker's medical career has been as an airway management specialist and paediatric anaesthetist.

In 2004, Baker led a team of 26 clinicians that successfully performed New Zealand's first ex utero intrapartum treatment (EXIT) procedure. In 2006, he founded the medical innovation company Airway Limited. He led the invention of ORSIM, a virtual reality bronchoscopy training simulator, now used in more than 40 countries. , Baker 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, and every operating theatre in New Zealand being equipped to manage difficult airways.

Honours and awards Baker was elected a Fellow of the European Airway Management Society in 2018.

Selected publications