Back to: Care & Feeding Instructions
Preop case discussion:
I expect to discuss the cases sometime the afternoon or evening before. The best way to reach me is by pager. If you are not able to reach me by pager, all my numbers on the weekly schedule are correct. Please call before 9 pm. If I am not reachable with reasonable attempts, leave a message on my answering machine or drop me an email with any specific concerns you have.
When you call, I expect that you will know about your patients, and will present their significant issues, as well as your anesthetic plans.
If the patient has significant comorbidities, you need to know something about the anesthetic implications of those conditions. For example, if one of your patients has MS, you should know something about anesthetic management with MS.
In the case that you are working late, and have not had an opportunity to look over the patients, please call to let me know.
If any of your patients are inpatients, you are expected to see them personally and complete a pre-anesthesia evaluation. The only exceptions to this are if your are post-call, or for Monday cases when the patient was not in-house when you could have seen them.
This is also our opportunity to plan any teaching for the next day. It is your responsibility to tell me what you would like to talk about.
I have noticed that I tend to be assigned to rooms with large numbers of cases requiring epidurals and/or other blocks. The mechanics of seeing the patients preop, induction, emergence, and giving breaks sometimes means there is little or no time for a dedicated block of traditional teaching. I will always try to make sure that we at least are able to do some practical teaching during the day.