Procedures

Anesthesia is great because it lets us get our hands dirty. I've gotten to start IVs, draw up and administer medication, set up monitors, ventilate a patient with a mask, intubate, and generally help out with the set-up prior to a surgery. Intubation itself is a fun procedure, sedating and paralyzing a patient, visualizing the vocal cords with a laryngoscope, and then sliding a tube through. And I got to see a whole host of other intubation techniques including fiber optic intubation and awake intubation. The awake intubation was the most taxing one. We weren't sure whether we could adequately ventilate the patient if we induced anesthesia and could not secure an airway; furthermore, his anatomy and pathology (large thyroid mass) disturbed anatomic landmarks. As a result, we sedated him, anesthetized his airway with lidocaine spray, and intubated him with fiber optics. The entire episode was very difficult and took almost two hours.

I've also gotten to do a few other cool things. I got to insert a spinal needle, do some regional blocks (femoral nerve and sciatic nerve), and thread a Swan-Ganz catheter from the superior vena cava into the pulmonary artery. For shorter cases, I get to put in a laryngeal mask airway or nasal airway; to empty the stomach, I put in orogastric or nasogastric tubes. All these hands on things are pretty fun, but make me realize that preparation is the key to success.

Image is in the public domain, from Wikipedia.