Current 2nd year anesthesia residents around the country will be the second group to take the American Board of Anesthesiology’s (ABA) “basic” exam (basically, the first half of our board exams) between our CA-1 and CA-2 years. Here’s an excerpt taken straight from the ABA website: The ABA’s BASIC Examination…
Yesterday was National Doctor’s Day, a day dedicated to recognizing the service of physicians. Interestingly enough, the date (March 30th) is the anniversary of the first use of general anesthesia in surgery. Hooray for old school ether anesthesia!
I was dreading night call on a Friday (the 13th, never the less) at the trauma hospital. Typically the shift is full of people who were involved in violence or reckless behavior – alcohol causes people to do dumb things. Instead, this call shift happened to be my most well-rounded…
I’m well into this month (a second month dedicated to managing difficult airways) which has been filled with call shifts thus far. I wanted to outline some minor updates since my last post. Tassadar was offline for over a month (it wouldn’t power on), and I finally had some time…
Trauma anesthesia is a whole different game – you never know what could roll through the door at a moment’s notice. Some patients are innocent victims of car accidents, crossfire, or simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Others were injured while engaging in criminal activity. As…
As a first year anesthesia resident, I’ve already done roughly 10 cases requiring cardiopulmonary bypass (all of which had Swan-Ganz catheters too), but now I’m officially starting my dedicated “cardiovascular” (CV) week.
I’m less than 10 hours from taking my yearly anesthesiology in-training exam (ITE). :shock: I took this exam a year ago as an intern prior to doing any anesthesiology as a resident, and as predicted, my score report reflected large gaps in my anesthesia knowledge. Fortunately, it’s very different this time around.…
Today I took part in a study assessing the utility of Google Glass in navigating the 20 standard views of conventional transesophageal echocardiography (TEE). TEE is routinely utilized in cardiac cases to evaluate cardiac function, signs of ischemia, life-threatening conditions, and intraoperative changes; however, mastering the technical skill of performing…
Been almost a month since my last blog post – during that time, I completed my first dedicated month of “difficult airway” training with gynecology cases. I was fortunate to work with our skilled faculty (some of whom hold/held premiere positions of leadership in the Society of Airway Management) and…
I feel like each successive year in my training is more difficult but more rewarding. 2014 was the year I completed my intern training and proceeded to start clinical anesthesia. With six months of anesthesiology under my belt, I’ve transitioned from the timid novice to a more experienced CA-1 capable…