I'm starting my anesthesiology sub-I next week and I was wondering if anyone can offer me any pointers on how to make a good impression? What do you feel is within the relm of a medical student? Also is there any book that might be good? I was debating buying the baby Miller off of a friend, but I wasn't sure how much it would help. Also is there any particular subject I should brush up on?
Baby Miller would help...but so would Anesthesia Secrets and so would the CCS Handbook of Anesthesiology, which are cheaper, easier to read, and more likely to help you in a practical sense.
Plan to be proactive and energetic. Ideally, each afternoon/evening you're matched up with the resident for tomorrow, so you can read about the cases and page him/her to touch base.Get there just a little bit before him/her, help them set up the room, IV's, airway stuff, and meds in a supervised fashion.
As, or if, they get comfortable with you, you will get more responsibility and freedom with the morning setup. See the first patient first, do as complete an preoperative evaluation as you can in the time you have, and try to get the IV started.
Once in the room, ideally you are doing a lot, or most, of the monitors and airway setup prior to induction. This of course also depends greatly on the attending. Ideally you are mask-ventilating during induction and having the first DL, changing the fresh gas flows, and helping things get settled down before incision.
During the bulk of the case is teaching time for your resident to probe your knowledge base and teach you more setup stuff -- and to hopefully get face time with the attending to chat, learn, get pimped, etc. You should be actively helping the resident, or doing the majority of emergence/extubation activities. Rinse and repeat!
I had a great sub-I experience and, when paired with trusting and responsible CA-3's, was doing 95% of the actual manual activities during a bunch of cases, all the time discussing management and basic science. It's enough to get you hooked on anesthesiology!