Sleepy Times

Before starting the anesthetics term, I didn’t think I would be that interested in the specialty. But it’s actually a very interesting field. For starters, there are a lot of procedure-based work: cannulas for everyone, bagging patients, intubation, arterial lines, spinal blocks, the list goes on. There are short procedures where the anesthetist needs to take care of the patient for only fifteen minutes, and the there are major surgeries that go for hours and hours. For those long surgeries, the fun and danger are at the beginning and the end – it’s kind of like flying a plane. All the checks and prep work at the beginning are there to make sure everything goes smoothly. Then when the actual surgery starts, the anesthetist can basically hit autopilot and read a book or something. If all the work at the beginning is good, it’s pretty much smooth sailing until the surgery is finished. Then at the end it’s like landing a plane where the pilot has the highest chance of getting into trouble. Most of the time it’s uneventful, but when things go wrong, they have the potential to go very wrong.

I also like the relative straightforwardness of the work involved. The anesthetist has a small number of powerful drugs to play with: a little of this for sedation, a little bit of the white stuff to put the patient to sleep, something clear for pain, a little of this to paralyze them, twist that knob if they are not quite asleep. Of course, it’s more complicated than that, otherwise they wouldn’t need to spend five year in a training program. But only after a week, I feel like I can get the hang of things quite well and actually enjoy it if I get into anesthetics, which I can’t say for some of the other specialties.

So, anesthetics just came out of nowhere and nudged its way for a place among the top of my list of potential careers. Cool.