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Anaesthesia: (derived from Greek, 1721) Loss of sensation and usually of consciousness without loss of vital functions artificially produced by the administration of one or more agents that block the passage of pain impulses along nerve pathways to the brain.
Most people think of Anaesthesia as just the art of giving someone some medication to knock them out so that the Surgeon can perform some surgery on them and then just letting them wake up, but in actual fact it's far more than that. There is a lot of procedural work, as well as a lot of dealing with postoperative care.
I think the appeal of Anaesthetics to me is that it's one of those jobs where you get to be with people at their most vulnerable, particularly just before surgery, when people are often nervous and distressed, and at those times a friendly face and a kind word can often have far more impact than at any other time. It's interesting how many of my friends that have had surgery can remember their anaesthetists - they may not be able to remember them by name, but they can describe them and tell me just how wonderful they thought they were. In terms of what sort of value it brings to a patient, I think it's incredible.
And I have to admit there still is an incredible amount of satisfaction from every intubation, every cannulation, every nasogatric tube. Doing procedures is fun. It really does beat sitting behind a desk every day.
How I Decided on Anaesthetics
In what seems like an eternity ago, but in actual fact back when I was in medical school I wasn't sure really what I wanted to do when I got out. Through much of medical school I figured I would head off into the largely untapped world of Medical Informatics, combining my knowledge of computers and information technology with an understanding of the needs of Clinical Information Systems from a medical perspective. However, if I thought I was going to head into clinical medicine, I figured that I would probably do either Oncology, Psychiatry or Anaesthetics. Not having a lot of experience of Anaesthetics back then, I didn't think much more about it.
Fast forward to Internship at Gosford Hospital, and I found that I actually really enjoyed Clinical Medicine, and decided not to go into Informatics. I decided that Geriatrics would be the more interesting of all the Physician fields, being a very broad spectrum of medical problems, and usually complex interactions between diferent systems.
It wasn't until fairly late in my Intern year that I was at an arrest call and a patient needed urgent intubation, and I didn't have the skills to do so, so it was a nervous 90 second wait for the Intensive Care team to arrive and do it. I decided then that I needed to do an Anaesthetics term to learn the skills, which I did early in my second year out of Medical School.
It wasn't until that term, however, that about two weeks into it, I found that I was absolutely loving Anaesthetics. I have a mind for understanding how systems function, and the Physiology that you use every day in Anaesthetics was right up my alley. Being able to look at a set of numbers and waveforms on a monitor and deduce what is happening was something that I got a kick out of. It was four weeks into the term that I had decided firmly that I was going to change my career plan from Physician to Anaesthetist. This meant that I decided to look further afield for positions, and soon after I landed myself an Critical Care resident position (Emergency, Anaethetics, High Dependency/ICU, and Cardiology) at Westmead in 2004.
In 2005, I landed a full time position at Auburn Hospital in the Sydney West Area Health Service and this year I have landed a similar Anaesthetics/ICU position at Blacktown Hospital. From October 2005, I will start at Westmead Hospital on the rotational Anaesthetics Training Scheme there, and will hopefully emerge as a qualified anaesthetist in 2010.
Completing the FANZCA Primary Examination
Also this year, I have completed a major part of the my training in completing the ANZCA Primary Examination, being Physiology in July/September 2005, and Pharmacology in February/April 2006. I am very excited that I have finished this part of my training, and it's a major hurdle now out of the way. What's more, as I now apply the knowledge that I have gained in studying for the examinations, I can see the applications in my practice everywhere.
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