The TOP Reasons I love being an Anesthesiologist
(THE Best Specialty)
By: LifeofaMedStudent
One of the greatest honors I’ve achieved is becoming a board-certified anesthesiologist.
In honor of Physician Anesthesiologist week in February, I shared my top 5 reasons that anesthesia is the best specialty in a brief post on Instagram. Here is a little longer version of those same reasons!
I know a little (and often a lot) about a variety of medicine!
From cardiac cases to neurosurgical, from OB to pediatrics, critical care to outpatient orthopedics – using a breath of physiology, anatomy, pharmacology – I help navigate patients through a great deal of different surgical procedures. Whether a healthy 2-year-old of a quick abscess debridement or a critically ill emergent cardiac window, I need to have the knowledge and skill to take care of whoever ends up in the operating room. It’s not just “putting the patient to sleep!” It means knowing how each of the various surgical specialties operates, the kinds of patients they’ll take care of, what the surgeons will want, and expecting ahead of time what the patients will need. This broad knowledge base is both challenging, yet rewarding to have acquired!
Procedures, procedures, procedures!
Intubations, airways, IVs, art lines, central lines from any angle, nerve blocks for every part of the body, epidurals, spinals, oh my! In an emergency, these skills save lives. In an elective situation, I get to tailor your anesthetic plan to each patient need. Have a wrist fracture that needs an open surgical repair, but have severe nausea with general anesthesia? Not a problem! I can have your entire arm numb in about 10 minutes and give you just the right amount of sedation to make the procedure a breeze! If there’s a procedure to be done to maximize safety or minimize pain – I’ve probably been trained to do it.
One patient at a time!
While not the case of every anesthesiologist’s practice, my day to day mainly involves taking care of my own patients. Working them up, delivering safe anesthesia care, and seeing them into recovery – usually with a focus on one patient at a time. I don’t call insurance companies, I don’t fill out much paperwork, I simply get to focus on the care of the patient in front of me each day. And while occasionally we get “usage reports” on certain drugs (i.e. the expensive ones), there is no one stopping me from using any particular drug on any particular patient. I get to do what I think is best at that moment! The downside is there is no one double checking my drug choice, dosage, or correct administration. It’s no doubt a huge responsibility, yet often feels freeing in the constant bureaucratic sludge of less urgent specialties.
Lifestyle and Pay
While many feel medicine is more than just another job, money and lifestyle are still important to mention. Let’s face it – some specialties pay more at fewer hours than others. While there can be enormous variation even within an individual specialty on lifestyle/pay mix, averages are, well, averages.
I am blessed to work a great job that pays well, too! How well? The recent Medscape Compensation Report lists anesthesia easily in the top 10 of specialties – with an average income of about $386,000 per year. That’s on par with Dermatology and Radiology, even a bit above ENT and Urology. In Midwest states, those averages are even higher!
Lifestyle and vacation time are also big perks typical in anesthesia jobs. Medscape 2019 Lifestyle and Happiness report listed anesthesia about the middle of the pack in terms of happiness outside of work (51%) and self-esteem level (54%). Inside of work, anesthesiologists are pretty happy – with 85% saying they would choose the same specialty again.
While the “average” physician only takes about 3-4 weeks of vacation, my experience with Midwest salaried anesthesia jobs is that 6-8 weeks paid vacation is pretty typical, potentially more depending on the job. My typical schedule is about 4 days of work a week, with one of those being a 24-hour call – from home. So while my hours can be a bit unpredictable, I am rarely in the hospital more than 40 hours in a given week. Ample vacation time, good hours, and great pay – it’s hard to beat being an anesthesiologist!
First impressions count!
While not always known as a “people person” specialty, I love the fact I often get just minutes to make a great impression on a patient. A few moments to ease tension, crack a joke, and hopefully make a patient trust that I’m going to see them through a vulnerable period with success. Patients are NERVOUS for surgery and sometimes act out in various ways because of that. The people skills to understand and diminish some of these fears are of utmost importance. While other physicians may get years to develop trust with a patient, I enjoy the fact I need to do it in just a few minutes. So yes, even though our patients are asleep much of our care, anesthesia is very much a people-person specialty!
When seconds count, physician anesthesiologists saves lives!
Trauma, cardiac emergencies, sudden OB needs – the pressure can be on! You take care of critical care patients long enough, bad things happen. Codes happen. Surgeons get into bleeding. Sometimes patients come to you crashing, sometimes their pathology or surgical course lead them to an emergent situation. I love the fact that what I consider a routine part of my job description, might downright terrify a large number of docs out there. When it counts, an anesthesiologist is simply expected to be cool and calm in the OR and the leader under crisis – running toward the patient in need, never from it.
Read more about life as an anesthesiologist in these popular prior posts:
How I became an Anesthesiologist
The Worst Trauma I’ve Personally Been In
The Most Badass Thing I’ve ever seen a Surgeon do
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It sounds great.
So why do you think some people (like PoF) give it up?
That’s a great point. I think it’s because he can – doing 100% what you want is still better than even a great job on someone else’s terms. But many people, and maybe him if he didn’t have the blog niche, go at it part time… for a long time. And why not? $250,0000/yr, benefits, and only work every other week? Yeah I can’t imagine “early” retirement from that, personally. And my 4 partners living that life in their 60s sure don’t seem eager to give it up either. But someday no matter how great the job, I too will enjoy doing it a little less at times as well, to do whatever it is I want.
Your 5 are my five even after 30 years. I quit at 65 only because I realized all I was doing was acquiring risk. The cash made no difference to my future. It’s a definite skill to gain a patient’s confidence enough they will place their lives in your hands IN 2 MINUTES of meeting them. Enjoy your career, I enjoyed mine greatly
Thank you for sharing your experience! I am studying to be an anesthesiologist and it was very interesting for me to learn more about this profession.
Thanks for sharing your experience! That’s great that you love your job.