Clinical Student Attachment - Year 4: Anaesthesiology

I finished off the first half of the year with Anaesthetics.

Now, Michael Jackson died from an overdose of propofol - an anaesthetic agent. You're dealing with drugs that are therapeutic, but could potentially be extremely dangerous so be careful!

The first day is at Tamaki Campus, where you learn basic airway management skills and essential components of anaesthesiology.

Assessments are:
1) Mini quiz on the first day
2) CSR
3) Case report
4) OSCE on the last day

The clinical attachment of anaesthesiology involves 14 half days (less if it coincides with a public holiday). Each half day, you're attached to a different anaesthetic consultant, and on one shift, you will be with a registrar doing a late afternoon-night shift.

I found the anaesthetics run to be enjoyable, but since you are with a different person every half day, it makes the CSR difficult to complete because there's not enough time for them to get to know you well enough.

Anaesthetics is more hands-on than most of the other surgical runs.  You learn how to bag-mask ventilate, insert IV cannulas, draw up and administer anaesthetic agents, intubate, and insert laryngeal masks. Depending on if the circumstance arises, you can also witness an epidural/spinal anaesthetic, insertion of a central venous line, and arterial lines.

There is also time during the operation when you're able to discuss with the consultant and learn.
Also, this is one of the few runs where you get to be the only other person with the consultant, so make the most of it!

On the last day, you go to Tamaki for a pain course (which I didn't have because the lecturer was busy), and an OSCE to assess your anaesthetics knowledge. This is easy so don't sweat it! There are 8 stations in total, with 2 where you demonstrate skills and discuss with the examiner. The other 6 are written stations and an example is a mask is placed in front of you, and you have to name it.