START

I start my anesthesiology residency in less than a month. The transition is quite scary; soon my entire role will change and instead of admitting older gentleman with chest pain and shortness of breath (which started off scary but now seems straightforward), I'll be putting people to sleep and become fully responsible while a surgeon takes a knife and cuts into them. The medications are different, the environment is unfamiliar, the vocabulary changes, the procedures are new. In talking to other anesthesia residents, the learning curve at the very beginning is incredibly steep.

Luckily, Stanford anesthesiology came up with their solution to this problem. The department has a START lecture series to ease us into anesthesiology during our intern years. Although we are scattered among many different programs for our internship, the program uses internet-based technologies to keep us connected. We learn about each other through message forums, we watch monthly lectures on core basic anesthesia topics, we take quizzes to gauge our knowledge, we have question and answer sessions. Although it only takes an hour or so each month, I feel that it's really helped me feel like I'm part of the starting anesthesia class this coming July.