4th year electives to prepare for anesthesia?

[aka_tigerj]

Besides electives in anesthesia, any particular rotations useful to prep for anesthesia residency? i'm assuming cardio, pulm are useful

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[bashwell]

ICU

 

[CodeBlu]

Besides electives in anesthesia, any particular rotations useful to prep for anesthesia residency? i'm assuming cardio, pulm are useful

I've been told by numerous attendings and program directors that your electives should be focused around "Acute Care Medicine."

Emergency medicine - useful skill set and it's always a good idea to see how patients evolve from their arrival to the ED to your OR table for a GA/ETT for lap appy. Also, trauma/fluid and blood product resuscitation/intubation in trauma patients is a bonus.

ICU - Basically invented by anesthesiologists to manage critically ill people. You learn a lot real quick.

Resp/Pulm/Cardio - You will probably get to do some bronchoscopy, and you need to know a fair amount of cards/resp to be comfortable in the OR it seems.

As far as subspecialty anesthesia electives... pediatric anesthesia is always a good call. Completely different induction usually.

 

[Morzh]

As a soon-to-be MS4 my anesthesiology faculty advisor recommended 2 months of ICU and 1 month each of cardiology and pulmonology. In addition to that I signed up for an ER month and a clinical pharm course for flexibility around interview time (dicactics/online only). The only anesthesia-related elective I'm taking is OB anesthesia, which is a popular rotation at my school for enthusiastic attendings, lots of procedures, and good hours. I got to do a month of general anesthesia 3rd year.

In the words of my advisor, "You'll get the best long term return-on-investment of your MS4 tuition if you spend your time learning not how to be a good anesthesiology resident, but a good intern."