Anesthesiologist

There are many aspects of anesthesiology that I really enjoy. One of them is working together with others in a very tight-knit group. For example, during open heart surgery I'm only one of a team of trained individuals that work together very closely to take care of a patient, sometimes in critical situations. But the teamwork aspect of it translates not only from those types of critical surgeries but to any other type of procedure that's being done that I'm assisting with. And that's one of my favorite things. I have an opportunity to rub shoulders with many talented and wonderful individuals and we're all working together toward the same goal, and that is to take excellent care of a patient and get them through a challenging time. So that's a very satisfying aspect of my work.

One of my favorite aspects of the field of anesthesiology is the procedural aspect of it. There's a cognitive side, understanding the science and the physiology and pharmacology behind what we're doing, but there's also the procedural side. That would be performing an echocardiogram to image the heart, placing breathing tubes to help sustain life, intravenous access, so central lines or other IV access, performing nerve blocks, whether that's on a periphery like the arm or the leg to help with pain control, or perhaps an epidural or a spinal block to assist with pain from surgery or other things. During a career, it's satisfying to be able to develop those skills and utilize them in order to help a patient.