Another anaesthetist here (NZ this time). It’s good to see our specialty written about in an informed way.
The only thing I’d like to point out is that the 1 in 1000 incidence of awareness quoted in the article is that of recollection of auditory stimuli only —i.e. hearing things going on around you intra-operatively and remembering it after. That experience need not be disturbing if it is counselled for and not entirely unexpected, so all of my patients are explicitly warned that they might hear noises, voices or music; albeit rare for it to happen. The incidence of painful awareness —the nightmare for patient and anaesthetist alike, of the patient being wide awake in pain and unable to tell anyone— is considerably lower. Most commonly that sort of event is down to poor equipment or an emergency operation on the critically ill, where the first priority is keeping the patient alive rather than fully anaesthetised. Equipment standards in the UK/Oz/NZ environment are generally very good now, but we don’t have any control over how sick you are when you turn up on our door! 
(Punctuation edit only)
