Happy Physician Anesthesiologists Week!

Happy Physician Anesthesiologists Week! This is the ninth time that the American Society of Anesthesiologists and the California Society of Anesthesiologists have celebrated the incredible dedication that anesthesiologists have for patient safety and patient advocacy. It is without a doubt that anesthesiology is one of the best medical specialties, as has been chronicled multiple times in this blog. Not only are we the first medical specialty to have a dedicated organization to patient safety, but our work in patient safety has enabled medicine in general to tackle conditions that, even 20 or 30 years ago, could not be managed. In fact, New England Journal of Medicine readers rated the 1846 report on “Insensibility during Surgical Operations Produced by Inhalation” as the most important article of the journal. Not only do we care for patients in the operating room, but we also improve outcomes in the pain clinic and the intensive care unit. We are leaders in the perioperative space and are constantly in pursuit of process improvement and better outcomes. In celebration of Physician Anesthesiologists Week, I wanted to discuss one of the most important and unique aspects of being an anesthesiologist, and that is our interaction with patients.

Caring for a patient before, during, and after surgery is a special relationship that most other medical specialties do not have. We are there to shepherd the patient through some of the most stressful, harrowing, and critical periods in their lives. Laypeople (and even some other medical professionals!) often think that anesthesiologists do not have interactions with patients, or that we are limited to interacting with patients only when they are sleeping. After all, much of their perceptions are based on seeing us monitor vital signs in the operating room; we make caring for a patient during surgery look easy. But we all know that what we do is so much more. We have to create an immense amount of trust with our patients in an incredibly short period of time, and they have to trust us enough to place their lives in our hands as they go through open-heart surgery, cancer surgery, or even worse. Sometimes, we are the last person a patient sees or talks to. We see patients at their most vulnerable. Because of this, we have to make sure that every interaction we have with patients is meaningful. This is not an easy skill to master, but anesthesiologists do it every single day. While other medical and surgical specialties get multiple visits over the course of several months to develop rapport with their patients, sometimes we only get 15 minutes to do the same thing. Physician anesthesiologists do this every single day and do it well.

So here’s to you, Physician Anesthesiologists of California! Thank you for always making sure that patient safety is your priority. Thank you for being your patient’s advocate before, in, and after the operating room at a time when they are unable to speak up for themselves. Thank you for putting patients first and thank you for everything you do, every single day.