This is my take on my prelim medicine year as well. I love learning internal medicine and I think it's absolutely crucial to practicing good anesthesiology. I also agree with whoever said anesthesiologists are physicians first. We as physicians shouldn't just limit our learning to what seems relevant to anesthesiology (at least, speaking for myself, I dont want to limit myself that way). EVERYTHING's relevant! As UTsouthwestern alluded to, anesthesiology is an extremely multi-disciplinary field. . .one of the many reasons i love it!! Actually someone mentioned pathology. . .i am doing a pathology elective right now, and yeah believe it or not, it's definitely relevant. Maybe less directly than say clinical pulm or cards, and we probably wont be sending off specimens for pathology, but to name one aspect as an example, pulmonary pathology is a huge discipline and understanding it at the cellular level contributes to overall understanding. . .same with GI path, cardiac path, definitely cytology (lots of BALs in the ICU!). I also am interested in keeping up with what's taking place on the other side of the curtain, and pathology (among other things) is definitely involved there. I dont know. . .maybe some of us here are just very curious and inquisitive people and want to know about as much as we can learn.
It's really funny to me when pathologists are surprised as to why on earth i'd want to do a path elective if i'm going into anesthesiology, or when medicine folk start trying to decide what would be relevant for me to know for anesthesiology, and just assume certain things wont be (when they in fact are VERY much so), and that i wouldn't be interested in knowing the "irrelevant" stuff. Actually, that makes me fume! 😡 😡 👎 👎 👎
Now that the OP mentions the inservice exam which happens 1 week into CA-1 year, however, i'm worried. . .do CA-1s actually have to pass that thing? Or is it just to compare one's performance from year to year? I guess i can try to cram M&M for 7 nights or so. . .