paeday
Senior Member
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- Jul 29, 2006
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There isn't anything wrong with it, you're right. If that's what they want to do then so be it. I love the idea of life as an anesthesiologist. There's not a whole lot to do once the patient is induced and asleep (the risk is in putting them down and waking them back up plus any medication interactions), there's very good money to be made, no call usually (if in a major hospital) so hours are good, etc., etc. However, I don't enjoy it and I'd rather do something I like (which is general practitioner) with its own particular shortcomings such as the shittier lifestyle and decreased pay.
I've had many people (like nurses) tell me I should be a surgeon. I guess that's based on my appearance as I'm tall, look athletic, etc. However, I actually don't care for blood a whole hell of a lot, lack the finesse that is sometimes required, and don't work all that well under stress so surgery and things like ER are out for me. And like your father's classmate, I don't have the ego/personality type for it. Not all surgeons do but, in my limited experience, most do.
Anyway, my point was that it seems strange to me that people would want to go into a field which traditionally is involved in caring for others and have an attitude of not even wanting to interact/talk to their patients. I've seen attendings say it e.g. "Why do you think I chose this field. Do you think I want to talk to my patients?" and I've had a friend (who is actually a very personable, likeable individual) say something like "Yeah, okay, it's time to go to sleep now" when referring to patients that are going to "annoy" him.
Jumbie, as someone in the field of anesthesiology, I just wanted to let you know that there is a lot more to anethesiology than inducing the patient and waking them up. If you ever been involved in taking care of really sick patients....you are keeping the patient alive while the surgeon does his/her job. Check out a liver transplant, bad trauma, cardiac surgery, etc. If you rotate at an outpatient place with healthy patients and straightforward cases you may get that impression that all there is to it is to put a patient to sleep and wake them up. This may seem very boring but I can tell you if you ask any anesthesiogist about stress most of them will tell you that there is a significant amount of stress because we deal with airways, breathing, circulation all if which if you negelect for more than a few minutes you will have permanent damage (hypoxic brain injury is one of our biggest fears). We do get a lot of routine cases but have enough of the tough ones to keep things interesting.
Also, most of us take call....it's a part of life because of OB, trauma, emergency surgery, etc. Again, unless you work at a outpatient place with easy patients/procedures (which is also getting harder because sicker patients are arriving to these places to avoid cost involved with overnight admissions). OB is another field married to our speciality because if you have fetal distress you may have to get that baby out immediately via c-section and that cannot be done (humanely at least) without epidural/spinal or gen. anesthesia. Even if a woman chooses not to get an epidural, for labor...if their baby gets in trouble we have to be ready to administer anesthesia for an emrgency c-section. Babies come when they decide to come....you can't have only daylight hours for most anesthesia practices.
Jumbie, you may want to give anethesiology a real good look....I love my job and have no regrets. Remember that about 15-30% of med school grads change their speciality choice. We get lots of
people who change out of surgery, internal medicine, and ER. Almost nobody ever changes out of anesthesiology. We take knowledge of medicine and apply physiology and pharmacology to get patients through the perioperative period. It's a very acute, goal directed field. Most med students don't get a real good representation of the field with their short rotations. The field is getting competative. In our interviews we have been seeing top 10% in class with average USMLE in the mid 240's. Anyway, check us out and sorry about rant....