What an absolutely incredible month! With weekends off, a week of vacation, Christmas Eve/Day off, and two academic days off to partake in Baylor Med’s anesthesiology residency interview days, I only worked a total of 14 days doing regional anesthesiology this month. In that time, I did 141 procedures. In…
I’m a little over halfway done with my regional anesthesia rotation and have accrued more neuraxial and peripheral nerve blocks than I could have ever imagined. There’s something incredibly gratifying about doing blocks one day, and seeing the pain relief it provides that evening… the next day… and the day…
I’ve been on vacation this week to unwind from the first six months of my PGY-3 year. Instead of traveling, I’ve ended up using it as a “staycation” to catch up on studying. After my Basic Exam, I’ve primarily been reading literature articles to learn the latest developments in anesthesiology and perioperative…
The farther I get in my training, the less anxious I feel about interviews. A little eustress is healthy and shows that the interview trail is indeed very important, but most of the typical, scripted interview answers of undergraduate days have been replaced by life experience.
Epidurals are routinely used to provide analgesia during the labor process. Many women swear by them and will request for an epidural even before they are committed to labor by the obstetrician. Others try to tough it out without any pain medications. In the interim, their discomfort with contractions and labor…
Today was my first month doing dedicated regional anesthesia as a CA-2, and my goodness, blocks galore! I swear, if I had done zero neuraxial or peripheral nerve blocks coming into this month, I’d easily meet my minimum requirements for RESIDENCY by the end of December. The volume is crazy,…
What a crazy day – the first epidural I’ve ever had to abandon, a myriad of acute pain consults, continuous block of the brachial plexus at the axilla, rectus sheath block x 6, post-op TAP block… and more Tegaderms than I want to remember right now. The culture here is all…
It’s so difficult to buckle down and study for another in-training exam (ITE), but the next one I’ll take will be somewhere between February 18 – 22, 2016. With about three months till then, I need to find the motivation to study!
Prior to my current rotation on the acute pain service, I had three months of obstetric anesthesia – the world of lumbar epidurals for labor analgesia and surgical anesthesia. I experimented with several epidural techniques but initially settled on intermittent pressure with a saline filled glass loss-of-resistance (LOR) syringe. This allowed me…
It’s fairly rare for anesthesia residents to pursue a dual fellowship, but for those who do, the combination of critical care and adult cardiothoracic anesthesiology is common. After being asked by family members and friends why I want to extend my training by another two years, I decided to outline the…