Thank you everyone so much for all the encouragement. I was a little unsure about going to an anonymous forum because forums can attract some pretty negative people. I was looking for some positive enouragement and I'm truly touched by all the responses from anonymous people giving guidance through their experiences. You don't have to take time out of your day to help some random person on the intenet and your words and honestly were very appreciated. It has really shaped how I'm going to approach this week and next few months.
I'm realizing too this has got to be the biggest first world problem ever. When I turn on the news and see nothing but hurt, not loving my job at this moment isn't the worst thing in the world. I'm lucky that my co-residents and faculty are so amazing because if they weren't my situation would be 1,000,000x worse.
Any more experiences/thoughts, good and bad are appreciated.
Lock down the SO by getting married, then have kids and be a stay-at-home parent. Much easier solution than changing specialties or career, or finding a fulfilling unicorn at this point in life that pays 1.1-1.5%er income.
I'm at the oldest end of the millennial generation, and I agree.
Actually anesthesiologists are mostly good doctors who thought anesthesiology was physiology, pharmacology, and all these other good things that the average outsider might imagine anesthesiology to be.
No... no other field comes even remotely close to the amount of nursing you do everyday!
That's not what we said!!!
Why do you think that?
He's most likely referring to the current fight to allow CRNAs to practice without physician oversight which WILL happen. Save this post for when it occurs so I can say "I told you so."
Dude or dudette, I liked everything including psychiatry. I was even president of the interest group in med school. It's not that unusually to have broad interests in medicine and still like anesthesia. The only rotation I ever disliked was OB. After a few years of doing primary care after internship I realized it sucked beyond belief. The time pressure to see patients in only 20 minutes and knowing that you couldn't talk to them completely or investigate all there issues in one sitting and stay on time sucks. Not to mention all the social work BS and following up on labs, consults etc. Work is never finished. Once I started anesthesia residency I realized I loved the procedures and performing safe anesthetics. Wait until you experience your first semi-emergency and see how you handle it. There is something very satisfying when it hits the fan and you "fix" it before your attending can even get back to the room.
I believe what a lot of posters were saying is true...that I need to give it several months of getting use to. Not every specialty is perfect, but I'm hoping the one I chose continues to grow on me.
You will probably go through a repeating cycle of ups and downs and there will be other points that you question your decision to go into anesthesia. Stay positive and keep your head down. It's residency, the whole point is to suffer now and then be an awesome attending. Embrace your pain, then put it aside when you leave the hospital. If you still feel the same way by the end of CA-1, go into pain. Or CCM, or something that fits you better. I am actually increasingly satisfied with working in the OR. I am just starting to feel like I know what I am doing some of the time! One thing that we can learn from CRNA's is that it is easy to feel like you know what you are doing with stable patients undergoing simple surgery. As you get assigned to bigger cases on sicker patients, I think you will find more than enough to stimulate your intellect. I could be wrong, maybe it's just not for you and that will become more apparent given more time. For example, today I was consulted to do a tube exchange in a guy with a retropharyngeal abscess from infected c-spine hardware. Neurosurgery removed his hardware yesterday and ENT drained his abscess. The OR anesthesia team placed an armored tube with a wire coil so they wanted me to replace it with a regular ETT so they could send this guy to MRI to rule out septic emboli to the brain and cord compression. They wanted to keep him intubated because he was agitated at baseline and whenever they gave him a sedation holiday, he was getting all worked up and tugging on his restraints. We helped them realize their scans weren't going to change management and they decided to extubate him instead. That's the short version, anyways. It gets much more interesting than lap appy's and ORIF's with the ortho bros.
And at all the geezers in the room: if SDN is any indication, you all whine and complain enough to hold your own against any entitled babies of the rising generation. Keep up the great work.
And that's how a good anesthesiologist will get to the conclusion that the safest thing for the patient is not to do what other specialists asked him to do in the first place. Especially those stupid intensivists, reading the 19th CXR. No procedure, no risk, voila!
Depends on the job. Some jobs are in house call and some aren't. 2nd call usually is a backup in case another room needs to be ran while the 1st call is solo in a case/c-section/etc
I can recommend a couple of good people in the mental health field that can help...But what if you like rounding
How's CA-1 treating you now?This week I have definitely had my share of sick patients and learning a lot. I'm starting to even enjoy myself even!
