73 Questions with an Anesthesiology Resident | ND MD

hello hello hey there is it about time no i got time 24 hour call uh you got enough time for 73 questions about that much yeah perfect okay so what's your name miriam and what's your specialty anesthesiology and what year are you i'm a pgy3 or clinical anesthesia year or two where'd you go to undergrad i'm canadian so i went to mcmaster university and medical school uh saba university school of medicine very small island in the dutch caribbean and where are you originally from i'm canadian so i'm from a small town outside toronto called bowmanville

wow so canada to the caribbean now to the u.s what in the world got you to augusta uh i wanted to match to anesthesia and it's pretty competitive so this place had me and i would i would have them kind of curiosity where are we going uh well since you've got some time i thought i'd show you the ors give you a little sneak peek of what it's like to be an anesthesia the exclusive or tour yes all for you so now back to medical school what was your favorite part of medical school the people

you make lifelong friends in medical school and what specialty did you think you were gonna go into on the first day of med school i thought i was going to be psychiatry like gung-ho what made you change your mind um i figured out that i like reading about the subject but i don't like practicing it which is kind of an important part yeah well you are here in anesthesia so what made you first fall in love with anesthesiology oh gosh it's it's just real-time medicine um all the interventions and pharmacology that you're you're putting in

place into the patient it's happening real time and it's very engaging that's awesome yeah so for the people that may want to do this how long does your training take after med school it's a four-year residency do you plan to do a fellowship after i do i've applied to cardiothoracic fellowship so wish me luck we'll do so for the people that may not be familiar with anesthesia what exactly is anesthesia oh gosh so i mean anesthesia is inducing a coma-like state for patients so that they're able to tolerate pain and procedures that they wouldn't normally

be able to tolerate there's a lot that goes into it but that's kind of the basics of it so is that all you do absolutely not we have a lot of subdivisions of anesthesia that we can specialize in you can do obstetrics you can do pediatrics some people do chronic pain where they might be working more in a clinic scenario and some people might be working in uh icu setting which obviously is a big place to be now that cove is a thing in the world yeah so it sounds like you do a ton yeah

we do explain to me kind of what happens on an average day for you yeah so uh i would get up in the morning and come through this little passageway here to get to the ors and set up for people what we do is that we induce patients under anesthesia we secure their airway for breathing and or what have you during the case we're responsible for making sure that the patient is hemodynamically stable and basically uh in that sweet spot that they're able to tolerate the procedure while being asleep so what kind of procedures do

you do oh we do a lot um we do epidurals arterial lines central lines we can do trans esophageal echo there's a lot that we do sounds like you do a ton but what jobs do anesthesiologists usually end up with um so you could work in the general or which is just sort of day-to-day cases down here you could be someone that works in a chronic pain clinic where you do management of patients with chronic pain problems you could work in an icu or you could just work within any kind of combination of those things

maybe in an outpatient center or here or what have you sounds fun and sounds like a lot of variety so what would you say is the most unique part of your specialty if you have to pick one yeah um i'd say that we're master resuscitators um we take people that are you know on the brink of collapse whether that's from hemodynamics from cardiovascular collapse sepsis things like that and intraoperatively we keep them in equilibrium or keep them where they need to be so what would be an example of that resuscitation uh we once had a

patient with a placenta accreta which is basically that the placenta is too attached to the to the uterine wall and she was bleeding so much that we ended up giving her 80 units eight zero units of uh yeah blood and she made it it took us two hours to get her stable but we made it yeah so car salesman time you gotta sell your specialty why should someone choose your specialty oh gosh it's it's real time medicine like i said it's very engaging and it's just the perfect mix of being able to work with your

hands but also being able to uh you know work with uh your brain and being able to problem solve and devil's advocate now why should someone not choose your specialty oh goodness um if you don't like to make real-time decisions here um you know time is time is going to make a difference sheet they're in that room okay time is going to make a difference for uh you know making these decisions for patients and being able to resuscitate so um so are there any stereotypes of your specialty yes people think that we're lazy they think

they'll show us in cartoons and things like that being like the ones that fall asleep or are drunk in the middle of a operation it's insane stereotypes true absolutely not we are some of the hardest working people i know all right now this is new so where are we uh we're next to the level one room we always have an emergency room available um that is at the drop of a hat ready for any type of emergency that comes in a level one so we just need to make sure that the room is prepped and

ready so what goes into prepping or checking a room so you need to make sure that you have things like um an airway a cart that's filled with all the necessities so that basically as soon as we need to go this room could be ready so that we could bring someone in and we can start doing our jobs so this is kind of a trauma room so what is the craziest case you've seen in the or uh oh a little less than a year ago we had a patient she was pregnant with placenta uh percreta

she had covid pneumonia she had sickle cell disease and was having acute acute chain acute chest pain crisis um she left against medical advice and when she came back five hours later she was being coded and she was already had a tube in her mouth yeah are you ever nervous at all coming into your shifts i used to be i think if i know that there's something going on i'll kind of prep myself but not so much nervous anymore so how many patients do you see on an average day um that could be anywhere from

like one to ten depending on what kind of cases you're doing and what's the most amount of patients you've seen in a day ooh uh myself and another person hold the record for the most blocks in a day which was 21. congrats yeah so how many procedures do you do on an average day um i'd say that's anywhere from like let's say three to five just depends how many uh ivs and things that you need to put in gotcha all right now for the fun i guess questions how many hours do you work in an

average week people are gonna love this uh anywhere from 40 to 80 life of a resident so what time do you normally wake up um not so bad it's like five to six what time do you normally leave the hospital um that can be anywhere from three to seven p.m you're not doing a good job selling this how many hours of sleep are you working on i'm an old lady i need eight how many hours of sleep are you working on right now i'm on a 24-hour call so i've been doing naps yeah so do

you have to take call at all i guess that answers yes questions night float as well same type of thing are you a night shifter day shift kind of person if i guess if you have a choice um i think you learn the most on night shift that's a good answer yeah how long does it take you to chart at the end of your day um once you get in the swing of things as an anesthesia resident you're doing things during your cases so you shouldn't hopefully have anything at the end of the day sentimental

question who are you most thankful for on your care team oh goodness um i think just like a play there's dozens of people you know backstage that you don't know about and every single person's vital to keep things going so all of them all right a fun question what is the funniest thing you've seen in a patient chart you know without violating hipaa of course um so we once had a cardiology note that said uh if any of us are alive in six months after this whole coveted thing i'd like to see the patient back

in my office real note dark humor nice what is the most common medical advice you give to your patients uh unfortunately i have a lot of people that smoke on the day of surgery and i have to educate a lot of people not to do that so what is your favorite nerdy random medical fact this question keeps you know catches a lot of people off guard oh gosh yeah um i feel like i'm just hearing like internet jokes in my head like the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell that's that is a great answer

okay so i guess you know you said you guys are mass resuscitators and that means kovid definitely was probably impactful to the field right can you describe how kobud impacted the anesthesia field for you yeah um so normally we only have about five or six people in our entire uh resident pool on icu at any given time and when cobit really you know became prevalent we started opening a bunch of icus even down here what would be normally the pre-op area and about half of our residents were staffing the icu for months like that's like

24 people so we were we were taken in a lot of that work we were oh we're incredibly thankful for you and so now let's switch it to be positive okay we talked a lot about your life inside the hospital how about your life when you clock out so what is your favorite thing to do when you are not working uh relax on my couch does your family ever ask you for random medical advice all the time it's always like medications or or just things they hear on tv what's the weirdest question a family or

friend has ever asked you my dad got a hold of an spo2 monitor and he always asks me he'll always tell me his spo2s each day and he's like is that a problem i don't know who gave him that advice i don't know most people don't know what an spo2 is i know who gave them that oh yeah that's your favorite dish to eat ooh who doesn't like a good lasagna your choice any favorite restaurants around here ooh fifth and finch it's my favorite coffee tea or soda tea okay all right this is a funny

question because i get a different answer from every doctor i talk to how much water should you be drinking every day oh gosh until you're not thirsty i think that's how it works i think favorite meal from the hospital cafeteria if you have one potato day baked potatoes are great here favorite healthy snack uh a honey crisp apple favorite guilty snack ooh mac and cheese good choice yeah controversial question pineapple and pizza yes or no i love it yes yikes judge me i love it apple android apple any artistic hobbies you keep up with i

like to sew i made this scrub hat oh very well done how long have you been doing it um like eight months it's my coveted hobby nice yeah uh what kind of music do you listen to in the or oh my god well in the or we try to keep it good for everybody i'd say like classic hits are a good one you know okay yeah uh top three favorite music artists ooh uh i can tell you the genres i listen to are very different like dance hall classic rock um r b different stuff thank

you what is the best way that you relax after a long day uh dinner with friends is usually my favorite way good choice yeah night in or go out on the town kind of person night in indoors or outdoors indoors beaker mountains beach would you consider yourself more of an introverted extrovert oh i'm actually more of an extrovert was that personality trait of factor in you choosing your specialty uh you know funny enough uh they say that most people are introverts going into anesthesia because you're kind of like working on your own but um i

don't always find that that's the case and it didn't deter me okay yeah all right so we're getting close to the end okay we only got a few more questions left but these will be more kind of reflective sentimental questions okay i'm ready you ready yeah alrighty so what did you think you were gonna be when you grew up as a kid oh for as long as i can remember it's been a doctor you know thanks to my parents i'm just kidding but yeah is there a different specialty you think you could have done um

i am a people person so i think i would have liked family medicine but i think that could have drained me as well but i'm happy where i am very happy if you didn't do medicine what do you think you'd be doing right now ooh um comedy writer that's awesome yeah snl or something were there any times you doubted you would make it as a doctor this field is pretty rigorous i think everybody has those feelings um that's certainly happened to me an intern year and even a couple times as to see anyone whenever you're

approached with something really new and difficult i mean i think it's a very natural thing to feel ready big question if you could change one thing about the medical field right now what would it be i think preventative medicine is the key uh component that is needed in this country i think that would make a huge difference for how people are able to have a quality of life and you know be able to enjoy their lives more so what can a medical student do right now to prepare to go into your specialty yeah so i

mean try and get exposure because nobody knows what this is ask for a rotation early just try and see it and then if you can try and get involved in like let's say research or just you know try and get a feel for the vi or the the field okay yeah and finally question 73 didn't take too long to get here all right so what would you say to the aspiring anesthesiologist right now wow i'd say this is a hidden gem in medicine it's absolutely wonderful if you have any interest in it if you want

to do it i say go for it because it's so rewarding all righty yeah thank you miriam that is all i have for you thank you you're pretty busy so i'm gonna let you get back to your 24 hour nightclub well thank you it's all about preparation perfect bye