First Senior Trauma Call

Friday night was my first senior call in the general/trauma operating rooms at Ben Taub General Hospital. The senior anesthesia resident works with the operating room front desk to coordinate add-on cases posted by various specialities, provides airway assistance at all code 1 traumas brought to the emergency center, responds to all code blues around the hospital, manages the post-anesthesia care unit (PACU) and oversees the junior residents/nurse anesthetists on the call team.

I’ve missed doing stat/trauma cases the most! The high acuity of trauma patients is always challenging and lets me reach into the growing arsenal of skills/knowledge I’ve garnered during my training.

Coming off a month of cardiac anesthesia, I was freshly accustomed to handling very critical patients through major open heart surgeries. While these are certainly more “controlled” than traumas, many of the special considerations overlap – managing wide fluctuations in hemodynamics, massive transfusions/coagulopathies, and having procedural finesse in unstable patients to name a few.

I was up the whole night, but had a very fulfilling shift with a great call team! At some point, I placed a blind (but transduced) central line under the drapes in a trauma patient, performed a peripheral nerve block, intubated a coding patient with an oral fiberoptic technique, and had success in placing “difficult” lines. Woo! 🙂

Seeing so many familiar technicians, nurses, and attendings also made me feel like I was back at home. I’m excited about being off for Labor Day and back on call Tuesday night!

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