Anaesthetics

I’m still constantly amazed by the new stuff that I’m exposed to as a doctor. Take anaesthetics for example. This week is the fourth week I’ve been on it for, and yet I still really don’t know how to use that damn anaesthetics machine well yet. It’s got a lot of fancy knobs, 3 (yea, three!) monitors that displays lots of numbers and pretty graphs, and lots of buttons that I could press, but I’m afraid to.

My job as a resident anaethetist appears to be the most relaxing job I have done to date. I don’t have to hold a phone, and I don’t get pestered much by nurses (they’re all too fantastic at looking after recovering patients to give me a call 🙂 My job is to put oxygen on the patient. Well actually, it’s more involved than that, but putting on the oxygen seems to be what I do a lot of. As well as putting in cannulas, and taking a brief anaesthetic history of the patient.

I must admit, anaesthetics seems like an extremely cool specialty. For one, it is the only specialty so far that I have seen that gives allocated breaks (yea, another person actually comes to relieve the anaesthetist so that they can actually eat lunch). Next, it is the only specialty that surgeons can’t bully. If an anaesthetist says that a surgical procedure can’t occur, then it can’t occur, and the surgeons have to stand there looking dumbfounded that they’ve just been told that they can’t cut up their guinea pigs er.. I mean patients. In fact, one of the anaesthetists that I was with felt it was too unsafe to perform surgery on a patient, given the arrangement of the theatres – the theatre was too small, the equipment was way too far away from the patient, and the theatre was horrendously understaffed (the anaesthetist was not pleased that all the nurses had left at the same time, meaning the anaesthetist had to be the orderlie staff, the anaesthetist, and the nurse – yea, not fun to be 3 people at once.

I find it funny that I have learned more about operating theatre procedures, and have spent more time in theatres than I have in my 20 weeks of surgical rotations. I have actually felt like I’m learning new skills for once, rather than just using the pen. I have put in numerous laryngeal masks, and have successfully today intubated my first patient without any consultant intervention. It’s a great feeling.

But, I must say however, that I can’t imagine myself doing this long term. It’s as boring as hell. From what I’ve seen (largely elective cases, exclusions including emergency anaesthetics, paediatric and obstetric anaesthetics) the majority of cases go smoothly (95%), while only 5% provide you with some adrenaline pumping action. So it’s either goes very smoothly (boring) or extreme adrenaline action (stressful). I don’t think I’d really want a job that swings in between these two extremes. And perhaps I don’t feel like it’s very rewarding. Just sitting for hours monitoring a patient’s vitals, and occassionally giving some more drugs doesn’t seem to be a particularly rewarding job to me.

Did I learn much from anaesthetics? Yea, I learnt quite a bit, and got to do a lot of procedures. Was the rotation enjoyable? Not a great deal to be honest (I was told that I was supernumerary – yea, like a spare tire), given that I didn’t feel I was doing too much. Despite all this, I still respect the jobs that anaethetists do, although I feel like it isn’t something that would suit me.