Break

If you ask any surgeon, they'll say anesthesiologists are all about the breaks. I can't deny this. Today, I was assigned to give morning breaks and lunches to attendings working alone in the ambulatory surgery center.  The OR environment is such that efficiency is a premium and an anesthesiologist has little free time. In between cases, we are busy getting one patient settled and the next one ready. During cases, things may be slow, but we're monitoring the patient and maintaining the anesthetic. There's no real downtime, and we have to keep what Mad-Eye Moody from Harry Potter calls "constant vigilance."

But like the nurses, we give each other breaks. More than just a nicety, it is important for us not to lose our focus and concentration during cases. In a long slow case, it's easy to relax that constant vigilance, putting the patient at risk. Furthermore, we have a type of practice where it's possible to temporarily transfer care to another practitioner. For many surgeries, I can get a quick sign-out from the current anesthesiologist, survey the workspace, and feel comfortable taking over that case pretty quickly. Thus, the work lends itself to this reputation of many breaks during the day.