University of Gloucestershire

Much of the real work has happened before that moment, and a great deal more may have to happen afterwards.

Adam Hart is Professor of Conservation Ecology, University of Gloucestershire.

This article was first published on The Conversation.

And today we're looking at preoperative fasting, or as we know it colloquially as kneel by mouth.

And I'm joined by Rachel Jefferies and Lee Crossland, who are senior lecturers in nursing at the University of Gloucestershire.

And they've written an article for Nursing Standard in 2026 entitled Preoperative Fasting Practice, Optimizing Surgical Patients' Food and Fluid Intake.

And that kind of encapsulates what we're looking at today, the need to keep patients safe through the surgical procedure, through preoperative fasting and meal by mouth, but also addressing their nutrition and hydration needs.

and you look after them and we got the training to, you know, like how the, the, the child development training, the, how do you work with other people? Because there's lots of different families, lots of different values, that kind of thing.

And I was so interested in my children's success and development and, uh, I knew I didn't want them to go to school but they did have to go to school because I had to work and after a year I knew that I wanted to learn more so I signed up to do a masters in professional studies in children's play at the University of Gloucestershire and so that was like a three year part time course or four years and So I was doing that and I really hated the fact that my children were in school.

I just didn't, I didn't like it.

And that drove me to really wanting something different for myself because I knew that things would have to be really different for me to pull them out of school.