I’ve been through two rotations in anesthesiology this semester and debated about posting a day in the life because every single day was so different. Sometimes I’d spend time on labor and delivery helping with epidurals and C Sections or moms with complicated pregnancies. Other times I rotated with the cardiac anesthesiologists setting up rooms for complex procedures requiring bypass, TEEs (ultrasounds through the esophagus to see the heart), placing many lines and tubes, and different requirements of drugs. I spent time in the pre-anesthesia screening clinic where we learned to manage the risks and minimize complications before patients had their surgeries. I worked with the transplant teams for anesthesia during those cases and learned more about he physiologic changes during the procedures. One of my favorite weeks was also spent placing nerve blocks with thin needles and using ultrasounds in patients for pain control during and after surgeries.
A typical day on general surgeries would look like this.
6:00 Help resident set up their OR for the cases of the day. Checking machines, thinking through obstacles we may have during the case and being prepared for them, drawing up drugs, setting out likely every possible emergency equipment we may need, and just really planning to be ready for anything.
6:30 Lecture
6:45/7:00 Meet resident and patient in Pre-Op Area to talk to the patient about the anesthesia plan, risks, and place any lines we may need. Sometimes we would put epidurals or nerve blocks in at this time.
7:20 Take patient back to OR and make sure everything is set up to put the patient to sleep
Depending on the length of cases we may have 2-4 cases a day. We would then repeat the steps above. Depending on the specifics of each case and patient condition after surgery, we would wake them up and take the breathing tube out and observe them in the recovery area, or take them to the ICU for closer observation where sometimes the breathing tube would be left in. A lot of medicine management is also done during this time (and throughout the entire surgery of course) for post operative nausea/vomiting, pain control, continuous sedation and maybe light sedation is needed after a procudure, blood pressure control must be maintained, etc.
For more Dayinthelife :
internal medicine // psychiatry // labor and delivery // family medicine // cardiothoracic surgery // NICU // transplant surgery // second year med student // first year med student // pediatric inpatient and gi // USMLE Step 1 studying