surgeons vs anesthesia

[madcow10s]

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has anyone else experienced tension or friction between surgeons and anesthesiologists? The other day I witnessed a hilarious cat fight btw my attending and the anesthesia attending, which revolved around why it took anesthesia an hour to induce the pt and why the anesthesiologist wouldn't even begin to start until the attending was in the room, even though the fellow was present, etc...

 

[powermd]

has anyone else experienced tension or friction between surgeons and anesthesiologists? The other day I witnessed a hilarious cat fight btw my attending and the anesthesia attending, which revolved around why it took anesthesia an hour to induce the pt and why the anesthesiologist wouldn't even begin to start until the attending was in the room, even though the fellow was present, etc...

I was present for a case in which the patient had bad arthritic changes in her c-spine in addition to very challenging airway anatomy. The only way to get a tube in her was an awake nasotracheal intubation. The ob/gyn attending flipped out when he entered the room and demanded that we do standard endotracheal intubation. The anesthesiologist calmly explained the situation, but the attending continued his barrage. In the meantime, the patient was scared to death. Finally, the anesthesiologist took the ob/gyn attending outside the OR and settled the issue. When they returned to the OR, we continued with the nasotracheal intubation, after spending a few minutes reassuring the patient that everything was okay.

The anesthesiologist could have given the surgeon a heads up about which technique he planned to use, but the surgeon's reaction was absurd, and very unprofessional in light of the fact that the patient witnessed it.

Aside from this one case, I've always seen anesthesiologists and surgeons getting along well during my anesthesiology rotations at Sinai and NYU.

 

[dr.evil]

Surgeon vs Anesthesia. That's always been funny to me. We need each other so why do we fight? So we like to work more hours than them, so what? They have shift work and are always around. Sometimes we do cases later because we don't have anesthesia coverage but we live.

I was actually talking to my fellow surgery residents this morning about how strong I felt our Anesthesiology residents are. Granted, they are just like us and at the mercy of their staff who are sometimes not as diligent as the residents but still...

I had a 2 year old crumping in front of my eyes. We bagged him and he did alright. I'm admittedly a little uncomfortable intubating kids (less than 5yo) but this kid needed it. I got the intubation stuff ready and had the nurse page anesthesia for me. The resident was there in less than a minute. I intubated the kid without a problem but I REALLY appreciated the resident coming down so quickly, being very cordial about me intubating the kid, and just using him for a security blanket.

These instances have happened many times at our institution and if I'm home and get called that my patient needs to be intubated, the in house anesthesia resident always is there without complaints.

 

[Celiac Plexus]

Surgeon vs Anesthesia. That's always been funny to me. We need each other so why do we fight? So we like to work more hours than them, so what? They have shift work and are always around. Sometimes we do cases later because we don't have anesthesia coverage but we live.

I was actually talking to my fellow surgery residents this morning about how strong I felt our Anesthesiology residents are. Granted, they are just like us and at the mercy of their staff who are sometimes not as diligent as the residents but still...

I had a 2 year old crumping in front of my eyes. We bagged him and he did alright. I'm admittedly a little uncomfortable intubating kids (less than 5yo) but this kid needed it. I got the intubation stuff ready and had the nurse page anesthesia for me. The resident was there in less than a minute. I intubated the kid without a problem but I REALLY appreciated the resident coming down so quickly, being very cordial about me intubating the kid, and just using him for a security blanket.

These instances have happened many times at our institution and if I'm home and get called that my patient needs to be intubated, the in house anesthesia resident always is there without complaints.

Had the exact same thing happen to me with an adult patient. 2nd month of internship, patient was transferred to the floor from the unit, I had just removed his tracheostomy tube, and within a couple of hours, was satting at 88%, then 85%, 83% (I paged anesthesia at that time and started suctioning the guy and gave face mask O2 with the knob all the way up), the anesthesia call guy showed up very quickly, tubed the guy (saO2=70% at that time), and saved his ass basically... Needless to say, I have since treated anesthesiologists very well.

Also, a lot of our attendings ask the interns and junior level residents a lot of anesthesia questions at the start of cases... I made friends with a lot of the anesthesiology residents/attendings early on because I got tired of hearing, "We're putting this patient under for major surgery and you don't even know what anesthesia we're using? You have no idea what is going into your patient?"

 

[b&ierstiefel]

for comic relief

www.ratemypoo.com

 

[Gutierrez001]

for comic relief

www.ratemypoo.com

NICE ONE 😀

 

[Worldtraveler]

I'm actually going into anesthesia and after reading these reply's, I think we'll all get along just fine.

 

[MechE]

for comic relief

www.ratemypoo.com

That circular poo was impressive.