Tag: anesthesia resident

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Anesthesia Education Clinical Tips Preparing for Grad School/Residency

#75 – Thrive in Training: communicating with preceptors

In this episode, the founders of From the Head of the Bed… Jon Lowrance, Kristin (Andrejco) Lowrance, Brad Morgan & Cassidy Padgett, talk about how to communicate with preceptors as anesthesia trainees.

This conversation was recorded as one of the original podcasts released at the launch of From the Head of the Bed, the podcast the proceeded Anesthesia Guidebook, back on March 10, 2015. Over 7 years later, it’s getting a re-release here as part of the Thrive in Training series and the tips shared are just as relevant as ever.

All four of these folks were third-year SRNAs at the time of this recording and offer tips for anesthesia trainees hitting the clinical environment for how to communicate with preceptors. How well you get along with the folks you work with in the OR will either make or break your day – as an anesthesia trainee and as a licensed anesthesia provider. It takes a hefty dose of emotional intelligence to navigate the relationships found in the OR. This is one of the things that many anesthesia trainees find surprising: just how hard they have to work to understand the people they work with, what relationships are already at play in the OR between OR RNs, surgeons, CSTs & anesthesia providers and how to create positive working relationships with preceptors.

It’s rare that anesthesia training programs – for CRNA or physician anesthesiologists – provide education on how to become a clinical anesthesia educator or preceptor. Those skills are usually left up to anesthesia providers to figure out on the job. Given that, many anesthesia providers don’t approach their roles as preceptors and clinical educators with deliberate and highly functional skills and techniques. They just do their job as anesthesia providers and expect anesthesia trainees to figure the job out as they work together through the day. Given this context, it’s critical for anesthesia trainees to understand how to communicate with preceptors in order to create positive working relationships.

That’s not to say that the onus is just on anesthesia trainees for creating their own positive educational experiences. Certainly, clinical faculty and anesthesia training programs should bear the primary responsibility for creating effective educational environments for their trainees. But given that the quality of educational settings for anesthesia trainees can vary greatly, along with the clinical teaching skills of faculty, it can only help if you as an anesthesia trainee show up with some knowledge of how to communicate with your preceptors. So that’s what we talk about in this podcast.

We hit on the following topics:

  • Importance of communication skills in the perioperative environment
  • How to prepare for clinicals
  • Tips for making pre-clinical phone calls to preceptors
  • The use of cell phones/electronic devices in the OR
  • Common questions preceptors ask students
  • How your communication skills should evolve during training
  • Importance of being teachable, flexible, humble and thankful

In the podcast, we talk about the “smooth & in” video. Unfortunately, I can’t find it and the prior link has been removed. It was a classic. If someone can find it, let me know.

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Anesthesia Education Clinical Tips Preparing for Grad School/Residency

#74 – Thrive in Training: how to crush clinical

This episode offers a run down on how to prepare for the clinical phase of anesthesia training. We touch on practical tips like which apps are helpful, what gear to utilize & how to acclimate to the clinical environment as well as meta issues like developing emotional intelligence and the right kind of attitude to create success in your journey.

I also highlight a bunch of other shows on Anesthesia Guidebook that are not part of this series that you may find helpful.

Outside of the Thrive in Training series, we’ve got lots of content on pharmacology and much more to come.  But to prepare for clinical, don’t miss the shows on the top drawer run down (episodes 17, 18 & 19), which for years were the number 1 requested content and remain some of the most listened to episodes.  Other shows on pharmacology include run downs on dexmedetomidine, succinylcholine, buprenorphine, the pharmacokinetics & pharmacodynamics of volatile anesthetics, local anesthetics and ondansetron for preventing spinal induced hypotension.  We’ve got an episode on a multi-modal, opioid sparing approach to total knee replacement surgery, one that overviews regional anesthesia, one on opioid free anesthesia and one on the anesthesia implications for patients who use cannabis.  

Other content that you’ll find helpful are 2 shows for anesthesia trainees who are going through the process with your families:  episode 15 is specifically about your significant others and anesthesia school with Jenny & Robert Montague.  Rob is now one of my CRNA colleagues here in Portland, Maine and his wife, Jenny, is a Registered Dietician.  They have 2 young kids and talk about the experience of doing anesthesia school as a family.  The other episode is number 50 – parenting during anesthesia training with Lein & Nate Woodin.  Lein was actually in Robert’s class at the University of New England and her husband, Nate, is a licensed child therapist.  They’re an amazing couple, also with 2 young kids, and we focus in specifically on the changing dynamics of parenting during anesthesia training.  Nate brings a wealth of experience to the conversation as a child therapist and husband of an SRNA.  

A couple other episodes you’ll want to go back to check out that would fit perfectly in the Thrive in Training series:  

Episode 10 is 10-quick tips on mastering airway management, episode 24 is with Jason Bolt and we talk about avoiding landmines as an anesthesia trainee in how you represent yourself on social media.  Episodes 31-37 all deal with learning anesthesia & the path to expertise; so we hit on deliberate practice, understanding cognitive state of flow in balancing challenge with skill and the power of the invisible can-of-calm.  We also hit on asynchronous learning, emotional intelligence of SRNAs and the transition, this year, of entry-to-practice training for CRNAs becoming a doctorate degree, when, for the last 30 years or so, it’s been a master’s degree.  

Then there’s a 10-episode run on provider wellness from episodes 51 through 60 that touch on everything from how to pay your debt off, to dealing with the pandemic to how to weather the storms and setbacks you’ll have in anesthesia training.  The top show in that run for anesthesia trainees, if you want to go back and just pick out one, is episode 54: hardship in anesthesia school.  This continues to be one of the most-listened to episodes from all of Anesthesia Guidebook and zeroes in on the best advice and stories I have for you if you find yourself up against a wall or being beat down by god-knows what on your path to becoming an anesthesia provider.  

Here’s the NRS Video Dream where Ben Marr imagines what life would be like if he was good at paddling. It’s amazing! (This is what it’s like to be a novice in the OR, watching the expert providers all around you… you just WANNA BE GOOD!)

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Anesthesia Education Preparing for Grad School/Residency Wellness

#53 – Overcoming Setbacks in Anesthesia Training

I originally released this podcast on April 4, 2020 to offer advice & encouragement to SRNAs who had been furloughed from clinical due to the COVID-19 pandemic. While elements of this show speak specifically to that context, the themes ring true for overcoming any set back during anesthesia school.

At the time, our level 1 trauma center, along with hospitals across the nation, clamped down on all non-essential staff, removing medical students, nursing students, SRNAs and others from the clinical environment in order to reduce their risk of exposure to COVID-19 and reduce transmission rates in general. This was an unprecedented moment for SRNAs across the nation. Adrienne Chavez and Kelly Gallant and I talked about that on the last episode of Anesthesia Guidebook. They were SRNA representatives to the AANA Health & Wellness Committee at the time and shared their stories of what they were facing and how they were keeping their focus on moving forward as the pandemic spread worldwide.

With anesthesia school, you gotta believe that the juice is worth the squeeze and keep your eyes on the finish line while finding ways to cope and be successful along the way. So again, while this show was originally focused on how SRNAs can deal with the set back of being furloughed from clinical because of the pandemic, the themes and advice I share is applicable to almost any set back you may be facing. So with that in mind, let’s get right to the show!

References:

Edmond Eger NYTimes Tribute:

Grady, D.  (20 September 2017).  Dr. Edmond Eger II, 86, Dies: Found Way to Make Anesthesia Safer.  The New York Times.  Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/20/obituaries/dr-edmond-eger-ii-86-dies-found-way-to-make-anesthesia-safer.html.Audio Player

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