Robyna Irshad Khan, ([email protected])
Dr Robyna Irshad Khan is a consultant anesthesiologist, bioethicist, educator, and The Mohammad Bhai Endowed Professor at Aga Khan University in Karachi, Pakistan. Over a career spanning more than 25 years, she has worked across perioperative care, acute pain management, regional anesthesia, medical education, bioethics, clinical ethics, ethics education, and institutional leadership. Her professional interests have developed at the intersection of clinical practice and ethics, particularly around questions of consent, pain, vulnerability, professional responsibility, and the fair use of limited healthcare resources.
Her academic journey has not been entirely linear. Early in her consultant career, she stepped back from full-time work to meet family responsibilities while continuing limited clinical practice. Although this slowed her formal academic progression, it also shaped her approach to leadership and education, giving her a strong appreciation of persistence, flexibility, and the different pathways through which professional careers develop. During this period, she completed a Master of Health Science in Bioethics at the University of Toronto and developed a structured training programme for anesthesia technicians at Aga Khan University. These two areas later became central to her academic work. Her involvement in anesthesia technician education grew into a broader commitment to allied health education and contributed to her current role as Associate Dean for Allied Health. Her training in bioethics led to sustained work in ethics education, research governance, clinical ethics, and institutional capacity building.
Dr Khan also trained in ultrasound-guided regional anesthesia at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and subsequently helped establish and expand regional anesthesia practice at Aga Khan University. She developed a structured training module for anesthesia residents and has led workshops across Pakistan on peripheral nerve blocks, acute pain management, and safe anesthesia practice. She coordinated the Acute Pain Service for ten years, served as Director of the Pain Fellowship Program, and led orthopedic anesthesia services, giving her direct insight into the clinical, educational, and organisational challenges that shape pain care in resource-constrained settings.
She currently serves as Program Director of the Master of Bioethics and Chair of the Ethics Review Board at Aga Khan University. She is also Principal Investigator of an NIH-Fogarty R25 grant focused on strengthening bioethics capacity in Pakistan. Her academic interests include informed consent, research ethics, priority setting, end-of-life care, professional accountability, pain management, and the ethical challenges faced by healthcare institutions in low- and middle-income countries. Across her work, Dr Khan has remained committed to making ethics practical, contextually relevant, and closely connected to the realities of clinical care, education, and research.