I’ve officially finished my month as the junior resident on the regional anesthesia service. I’ll be revisiting this rotation either as a CA-2 or 3, so this was a great opportunity to lay the foundation for whatever follows.
Each week I learned more about the nuances of positioning and preparing a patient for a peripheral nerve block based on the type of procedure they would receive. Regional anesthesia entails a mastery of local anesthetic pharmacology, but a lot boils down to technique. Before this rotation, the bulk of my ultrasound experience came with placing central lines. Now I’m much more comfortable with selecting probes, adjusting parameters on the ultrasound machine, and knowing how to best optimize my target.
Overall, it was a very laid-back month made even more enjoyable by a wonderful set of attendings and upper-level resident! For December, I’ll be back in the operating room performing primarily general anesthetics. It’s been over a month since I induced general anesthesia or intubated a patient… hope I’m not too rusty! 😉
