Private Practice

I had a couple of what is often described as "private practice days." In one of them, I had nine surgeries, all ear tubes and/or tonsils and adenoids. On another day, I had radiation therapy, GI procedures, liver biopsies, and bone marrow biopsies. These are pretty common days for the anesthesiologist in an ambulatory surgery center. Most children are pretty healthy, the procedures are minor, and patients go home the day of the surgery. Providing adequate anesthesia isn't hard, but the goal is to optimize the efficiency and flow of the day. Patients, surgeons, and staff don't tolerate slow anesthetics, and even a delay of five minutes per case can easily translate to an hour behind schedule. Likewise, the anesthesiologist cannot let a bottleneck of patients build up in the recovery room, and good pain and nausea control is necessary to get kids home in a timely fashion. So these days actually require a lot of preparation, planning, and efficiency to keep everyone happy.