Hey everybody, looking for some help/info about CT anesthesia programs. Primarily interested in info on work hours, environment, and TEE experience. If you have any info on these programs it would be greatly appreciated, thanks- Columbia, Emory, Cleveland, Wash U, UC-Denver, UCLA, UCSD, Stanford, Texas A&M (Scott-White). Thanks!
CT fellowships
- Thread starter bballfan
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Columbia has a busy service, great TEE experience (Jack Shanewise is there now), and over the past three years has managed to organize a schedule that keeps the fellows and residents on the service organized and their hours more equitable, consistent and controlled.
The attendings there are fantastic, and the diversity of cases is pretty extensive, but those are also scheduled; so you have a thoracic day, a lines day, echo day, cardiac day, academic day.
With the volume they do, they've tried to make sure to give everyone protected time.
The CTICU is also a great resource for post-op management, especially with VADs and pumps.
You'll learn a lot.
Not to say that you won't at the other programs, but you can only truly comment on where you've worked.
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I'm a resident at UCSD, and not completely familiar with what our CT fellows do, but I can describe our case base. We are the world's leading center for pulmonary thromboendarterectomy and have done more of these cases than the rest of the world combined. There is a transplant program and right now there seem to be 2-4 heart and/or lung transplants monthly; we've also started doing total artificial hearts (we're the only Syncardia center in California, although I think UCLA does AbioCor implants). Beyond that, the usual cardiac cases: CABGs, usually off-pump; valves, often minimally-invasive; VADs; etc. The CT surgery department has been expanding recently and we're going to be opening 2 new cardiac ORs in the next month. Our cardiac attendings are terrific, and with a couple of exceptions, the CT surgeons are also surprisingly pleasant to work with.
There are currently 2 fellows, and although with the current case volume most cases are being done by residents, I imagine that fellows will be doing more of their own cases next year and onwards. Again, I'm not sure what the fellows do much of the time, but one of them is generally present whenever a TEE can be done. They seem to have relaxed work hours.
There are currently 2 fellows, and although with the current case volume most cases are being done by residents, I imagine that fellows will be doing more of their own cases next year and onwards. Again, I'm not sure what the fellows do much of the time, but one of them is generally present whenever a TEE can be done. They seem to have relaxed work hours.
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A "lines" day. The volume of cases that go through the ORs, cardiac and thoracic, have resulted in the department trying to organize things into a factory line prep setup. Cases about to go in have the lines inserted (CVC, PA caths, A-lines, Thoracic epidurals, etc) ahead of time. Your job that day is to prep the patients to help expedite turn over, while at the same time getting a more consistent and numerous opportunity to sharpen your technical skills.
This also turns into a slight Echo day, as with your down time you can float through the rooms and practice getting your echo views on the patients already in the ORs.
The volume there, at one point, was getting too intense, so to ensure the schedule was more predictable, they started making sure everything was assigned and broken up into shifts, so you could more reliably organize your life.
That doesn't mean it always happens that way, but it made things a lot more dependable.
