As part of our curriculum in Med 1 and Med 2, students pair up with a doctor half a day/week for the year (or two half years) in the specialty of their choice. I think the purpose of these electives is to explore what is interesting to you, and maybe rule a career path or two out.

I chose to do my elective in Anesthesiology. Before I began my elective, I assumed that an anaesthesiologist was the person that put people to sleep before surgeries and woke them up after. As you can imagine that is an oversimplified concept, but a perfectly reasonable one if you ask me. I didn’t realize that there were a lot of subspecialties such as cardiac, neuro, pediatric, emerge, ICU etc.

To kick off my December break, I thought it would be a wonderful chance to really get to experience my elective by shadowing my preceptor for his entire week. So from Monday the 17th to Friday the 21st, I showed up at work for 7am and stayed until we were done. I have to say I had a fantastic experience. My preceptor is a cardiac anesthesiologist, so I got to see a lot of different types of heart surgeries. I’ve seen cardiac bypass surgery, aortic valve replacements, mitral valve replacements, new pacemakers, battery replacements and lead replacements.

During my typical half day visit, I usually get to see the start or end of one of these procedures, and rarely more than one. But this full week I got to see about three full procedures per day. I had many more chances to get some hands on experience with a few things like doing the blood gas tests, checking the clotting time of the blood and testing cardiac output before and after procedures. I also got to try to intubate several times and try to start several IVs several. I say ‘try’ in these instances, because that’s pretty much all they were. Though, on my last day I had a successful intubation (only after someone placed the laryngoscope blade for me) and I also got my last IV attempt to work (with some guidance at an important moment).

I think the most beneficial part of that week was the chance to start feeling comfortable in the OR environment. I started to get a sense of where equipment is stored and where different pharmaceuticals are. I got to know the different hospital staff that work in the Cardiac rooms, and some of them got to know me.

As much as I enjoyed that week, I have other more pressing hurdles to overcome. I’m sure I’ll become an IV pro soon enough, but right now we have 19 days until the Metabolism and Function exam, and I feel like I need them all and then some!

Happy 2008 to everyone!