As seniors, we oversee our junior trainees’ cases while coordinating the case flow through the operating rooms with our front desk during call shifts. While the junior residents and SRNAs check our “stat rooms” and emergent airway boxes prior to preparing for their respective cases, I’ll visit the pharmacy to grab…
I’m sitting at the gate in O’Hare airport waiting for my flight back home to Houston and wanted to reflect on my experiences at ASA’s 2016 annual meeting. The last several days have been such a morale booster! Anesthesiology has such a pervasive influence on many areas in healthcare and is…
Tomorrow morning, I’ll be flying out to the American Society of Anesthesiologists Annual Meeting 2016 in Chicago! Over 15,000 anesthesia professionals from roughly 100 countries will be learning skills, promoting new techniques and gadgets, and presenting research, lectures, and clinical cases regarding our field. It’s the first time I’ll be…
Our anesthesia program’s senior residents are required to give a 30 minute presentation on a topic of their choice at our department’s weekly Grand Rounds. My presentation is in six weeks, and I’ve spent the last few weeks collecting articles pertaining to my topic – evidence based challenges to dogmas…
I wanted to give you all an idea of what I’ll be doing over the next ~6 months to obtain a Massachusetts medical license and drug enforcement administration (DEA) certification prior to beginning my critical care fellowship. It’s a necessary but cumbersome (and very expensive) process which requires many months…
Merck hosted our first journal club of the academic year yesterday evening at Sullivan’s Steakhouse. The topic: “Clinical Considerations in Neuromuscular Blockade Management” with an emphasis on sugammadex (Bridion). For years, this drug has been used in other parts of the world as a reversal for neuromuscular relaxation due to rocuronium/vecuronium.…
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…
I have one more day of cardiothoracic anesthesiology at the Veterans Affairs Hospital. Tomorrow’s case will also be my most challenging one to date – a descending thoracic aorta aneurysm repair. I’ll finally get a spinal drain in residency. :-)
I completed my first week of cardiothoracic anesthesiology at the Veterans Affairs Hospital, and it has been wonderful! Compared to my last month at the Texas Heart Institute, the VA typically handles only 1-2 cardiothoracic cases daily, allowing me ample time to practice echocardiography and study cardiac physiology. I’ve mainly…
As a PGY-4, I have two months on the cardiothoracic anesthesia service at Texas Heart Institute (THI) and just finished my first on a memorable note. I was on call yesterday and had the privilege of working alongside an incredible clinical fellow to do a heart transplant case. This is…