TJU/Education/Anesthesiology/Syllabus/Objectives

Syllabus - Objectives

What is Anesthesiology?

Anesthesiology is the practice of medicine concerned with the perioperative management of patients undergoing surgical and medical procedures. The scope of the practice is enormous with the anesthesia practitioner being responsible for the care of patients of all ages, from the premature infant to the octogenarian, undergoing all varieties of procedures, ranging from cardiac surgery to sedation for radiological procedures. Currently, anesthesiologists are actively involved in many aspects of patient care including preoperative patient evaluation and optimization, operating room management, intraoperative anesthesia care, critical care medicine, and acute and chronic pain management.

Why is an Anesthesiology rotation necessary for medical students?

Most medical practitioners will be involved in the care of patients receiving anesthesia care at some point in their career.

Those of you choosing careers in surgical specialties will become most familiar with anesthesia because all of the patients you operate on will receive some type of anesthesia care.

Those of you choosing careers in primary care specialties will refer patients for surgical care and may be asked to carry out preoperative evaluations to determine if your patient is in optimum condition to undergo the proposed surgical procedure.

Those of you choosing careers in acute care medicine, such as Emergency Room Medicine or Critical Care Medicine, will need to develop advanced skills in airway management as well as become familiar with many of the sedative-hypnotics, analgesics, and neuromuscular blocking agents currently used during routine intraoperative anesthesia care.

What is the objective of the Anesthesiology IDEPT 470 rotation?

The objective of this rotation is to expose the student to a core of anesthesia related information that all physicians should be familiar with. This information will give the student a greater understanding of the dynamics of the perioperative period and an appreciation of the decision making processes that occur during anesthesia care. This information can be categorized as related to preoperative care, intraoperative anesthesia management, and postoperative care.

Lectures and educational material will be presented outlining the currently accepted guidelines for preoperative care including preoperative cardiac evaluation, preoperative pulmonary evaluation, and the ordering of preoperative laboratory testing.
Lectures and educational materials will be presented explaining current concepts of intraoperative anesthesia care including patient monitoring, airway management, general anesthesia, local anesthetics and regional anesthesia, spinal and epidural anesthesia, and fluid and transfusion therapy.
Lectures and educational material will be presented discussing current concepts of acute pain management including spinal and epidural opiates and patient controlled analgesia.

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