Elective Years 1 and 2: Anesthesia Medicine

Department: Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine
Title: Anesthesia Medicine
Location: University of Alberta Hospital
Duration:

12 hours
Contact:

Darci Chaba apmedu@ualberta.ca 780-407-2781
Overview:

Year 1 shadowing for exposure assigned to one of our residents for approximately 4 hours.

Year 2 shadowing 12 hour electives assigned to staff - divided into two, six hour days.
Objectives:

At the end of your elective, you should have acquired the following level of knowledge for practical skills:

Perioperative Assessment and Management

  • ASA Classification
  • Recognize that different disease processes can influence the choice of anesthesia technique and post-operative management
  • Recognize that preoperataive optimization of a patient's disease is important

Airway

  • Be able to establish and maintain an airway
  • Recognize an obstructed airway and deal with it appropriately
  • Have an appreciation of airway assessment and hence be able to recognize a potentially difficult airway

Anesthesia

  • General Anesthesia
- Have an understanding of the stages of induction, maintenance and emergence

- Have an understanding of the drugs used to provide anesthesia; induction and volatile agents; muscle relaxants and analgesic drugs.  Great detail is not expected but you should at least know which are muscle relaxants and which are induction agents, etc

  • Regional Anesthesia
- Be able to discuss local anesthetic drugs
- Recognize that toxicity can occur with local anesthetics and be able to recognize and treat toxicity appropriately
- Be able to discuss the differences between spinal and epidural blockade
- Be able to discuss indications for spinal and epidural anesthesia and the potential side-effects and complications
- Be able to discuss other uses of local anesthetic drugs

You should try and follow at least one patient through the Recovery Room

Intravenous Access and Therapy

  • Be able to confidently establish a peripheral IV
  • Have some understanding of the different IV fluid available (crystalloid/collid/blood)

Acute Pain Management

  • Understand the physiological consequences of pain and therefore recognize the importance of good pain management in the postoperative patient
  • Discuss the concept of multimodal or balanced analgesia
  • Be able to discuss the different analgesic drug groups
  • Be able to define, recognize and manage respiratory depression caused by opioids

Oxygen Therapy

  • Discuss the rational use of oxygen
  • Be able to discuss the different method of delivering oxygen to patients

Resuscitation

  • Know Basic Life Support and the ABSs
  • Know the drugs used during cardiac arrest
  • Be able to define shock and the classification of shock
  • Be able to discuss the clinical features and management of hypovolemic shock

Monitors

  • Have an understanding of the following:  NIBP, SpO2, ECG, ETCO2 and be able to discuss the information that they provide and their potential inaccuracies
Additional Notes:
Last Updated: February 14, 2022