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…
What a beautiful day in Houston! I’m halfway done with my first acute pain rotation and really enjoying my time back at the #1 cancer hospital in the country – MD Anderson Cancer Center. :-)
I’m officially finished with my MD Anderson ICU rotation and looking forward to my next rotation on the cardiac transplant and ventricular assist device ICU service at Texas Heart Institute. Working with critically ill cancer patients showed me the importance of prioritizing problems, many of which aren’t even medical in…
“Push FAST, GO!” I heard our ICU attending say as we hurled our patient’s stretcher down the hall towards a vacant ICU bed. “PEA arrest – as soon as we stop, someone needs to jump on the bed and start chest compressions!”
This weekend, I ran most of the medical ICU and had flashbacks to ICU rotations from my intern year. It’s a field I was considering from the get-go, but this weekend reinvigorated my interest in pursuing a critical care fellowship.
My ICU attending, a more experienced physician who has seen the practice of critical care evolve over decades, left me with an interesting thought yesterday. We discussed a potentially difficult airway and the need to be proactive rather than reactive, especially in the critically ill population.
I’m kicking off my third year of residency (“CA-2” in anesthesia world) working at MD Anderson Cancer Center, one of the top two cancer institutes in the country! As a medical student at Baylor Med, we had limited opportunities to work there; however, as a resident, we do an ICU…