Volume 77 Number 3

A Day in the Life of a Academic Anesthesiologist

“The life so short, the craft so long to learn.”
Hippocrates (around 460-375 BC)

And it is. Learning never ends; it is a path intertwined with moments of challenge, growth and discovery.

I “learnt” that very early in life—and not from any book or class, but from my father. He was the one who ingrained it in our minds. Sounds cliché, but I always wanted to be a doctor: taking care of everyone and anyone who would fall sick including my cat, who was treated to a paste of leftover antibiotics for whatever ailment she had! And so here I am today, in an academic medical center, taking care of patients while teaching anesthesiology to residents, medical students and sometimes Certified Nurse Anesthetists (CRNAs). And I, in turn, learn something new every day.

What does a typical day look like?

Our typical day depends on the day and assignment, with our hospital being a Level 1 Trauma Center. I may be working in the main operating room (OR) anesthetizing a variety of cases ranging from regular scheduled surgeries to urgent or emergency ones. Or I may be out in the “wilderness” of interventional radiology or electrophysiology, endoscopy or the MRI/CT Scan suite, to name a few. And how we work outside the operating room with patient- or procedure-related technical challenges is a topic for another day!

Anesthesiology residents present their cases to us the night before, and thus, are well prepared. Being a perioperative physician, I follow the patients from the preoperative area into the OR; manage their anesthetic during the surgery; and then move into the recovery room and beyond. A colleague adept at performing regional anesthesia blocks supervises residents in performing nerve blocks to prevent postoperative pain. Another colleague staffs the recovery room with a resident, keeping on the lookout for any untoward mishaps and responding to codes throughout the hospital, including in the trauma bay.

As academic anesthesiologists, our responsibilities vary widely and include not only didactics but also research and administrative tasks in addition to our clinical duties.

• Administration, including being in a role such as department chair, residency program director or division chief, provides us with extra opportunities to advance our educational programs and improve departmental operations.
• Research, both clinical and basic science, is encouraged in academic medicine to help advance medical knowledge and improve patient care and safety.

Almost a quarter of academic anesthesiologists are involved in research that is mostly clinical.¹ Sometimes we are assigned academic days to pursue these interests or duties.

Sub-specialization is encouraged in academia, making us experts in a certain field such as cardiac or pediatric anesthesia, critical care, pain medicine or obstetrics anesthesia. There are year-long fellowships available for interested residents, making them proficient in their chosen fields.

Whether in the OR, a classroom or a pain clinic, we are always teaching, supervising and mentoring the next generation of anesthesiologists and medical students. Moreover, as perioperative physicians—and with our exposure to a range of specialties, especially working in non-operating room areas (NORA)—we are uniquely situated to address issues at organizational levels. With patient safety as an imperative on our minds, we need to take more leadership roles in the logistics, planning and other aspects of operations around the hospital.² And we must continue research. It is vital to the learning process and to answer questions like the hows and whys of anesthesia, of which there are many! 

Being an academic anesthesiologist, I am constantly being challenged by my patients and my residents into thinking. The intellectual stimulation and discussion provides a certain type of satisfaction. Residents looking to go into academic anesthesiology would love the flexibility of the schedules; the high-acuity patient population with a range of cases from all specialties; time off for research; the combination of bench and clinical work—and the pleasures of teaching and molding young medical minds into amazing anesthesiologists. I wouldn’t want to change it for anything!