Blog 22: Independent Component 2

LITERAL
(a)“I,  Julianne General, affirm that I completed my independent component which represents 30 hours of work.”
(b) Cite your source regarding who or what article or book helped you complete the independent component.

For this independent component, I shadowed under 3 different anesthesiologists to gain more insight into how other anesthesiologists work aside from my mentor. I followed Dr. Zhuang T. Fang (from UCLA Stein Eye Center), Dr. Park (another doctor from Desert Valley Medical Center), and Dr. Lorna Wood (from Montclair Medical Center).

(c) Update your Independent Component 2 Log (which should be under your Senior Project Hours link)

(d) Explain what you completed.   

For each of the 3 doctors, I shadowed for at least 10 hours over the course of different days. And each doctor specialized in different aspects. For example, Dr. Zhuang T. Fang from UCLA is an attending for anesthesia residents and he specializes in anesthesia for eye surgeries. When I was with Dr. Park, I got to see a lot of urological surgeries (most patients have kidney stones). And when I was with Dr. Lorna Wood, I got to see a lot of OB cases, so they were epidural placements and deliveries.
 
(e) Defend your work and explain the component's significance and how it demonstrates 30 hours of work.   Provide evidence (photos, transcript, art work, videos, etc) of the 30 hours of work.   

Because my essential question asks about how an anesthesiologist is able to ensure the safety and comfort of their patients, I didn't want to just see how one person does their job. My mentor is very experienced and has helped me so much along the way, but people do a lot of things differently. I thought that by exploring other areas that anesthesiologists are also involved in, it could help better support the answers I could come up with for my EQ. So, I spent days with 3 different anesthesiologists to see different aspects of the job.

Here are some photos I've taken:

UCLA Stein Eye Center (I was with Dr. Zhuang T. Fang)

(This is the fancy sign at the front of the building)

(This is the entrance to the beautiful new building. It was so fancy!!)

(This is the observation room adjacent to OR 1. I had to go down a crazy flight of stairs from the main entrance to get here and they had a fancy machine that gives you scrubs.)

(This was my view of the operating room before one of the surgeries started.)

(Unfortunately, due to HIPAA laws, I was not allowed to take photos of the patients having surgery, but I was able to sneak some photos while the lights were off. You can sort of see the screen of a person's eye while getting cataract surgery.)

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Montclair Medical Center (I was with Dr. Lorna Wood)

(This is one of the hallways in the OR dept.)

(This is one of the supply rooms stocked with a bunch of medical supplies.)

(This is Dr. Lorna Wood showing a breathing mask.)

(Dr. Wood is checking the schedule for the day's surgeries.)

(These are more supplies that stock the OR. There was a lot of stuff there.)

(This is me standing next to a baby warmer/incubator for c-sections.)

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Desert Valley Medical Center (I was with Dr. Park)

(This is one of the operating rooms with a Da Vinci machine on the left.)

(I got to help set up the operating table for one of the cases that day.)

(This is me while we waited for the patient to be brought down from the patient floors.)

(This is known as a glidescope. It's a fancy version of a regular laryngoscope blade because it has a camera and light.)

(This is a propofol infusion pump.)

(This is me in the waiting room after a long day.)

(f)How did the component help you answer your EQ? Please include specific examples to illustrate how it helped. 

This component helped me see the different sides of anesthesia that I had not known much about. Because my mentor works mostly on "bread and butter" surgeries. I wanted to experience how the principles that my mentor had taught me applied to other aspects of the job of an anesthesiologist. And in watching these 3 other doctors, I had such a great experience learning from them and getting to see how the job is done.

For example, one thing that Dr. Park said to me that has stuck to me was about how he thinks of putting a patient under anesthesia. He said it's sort of like flying a plane. You start out by putting them under anesthesia slowly until they're completely out and you keep them at that "altitude" throughout surgery. Once you know surgery is about to be done (in his analogy, once you're arriving at your destination), you can start to slowly wake up the patient. It's funny because I remember that as he was telling me this, as if his timing was so perfect, the patient started responding and waking up from a surgery that had just finished.

Another example is my experience going to UCLA. Being that Dr. Fang is a professor, he was very knowledgeable and explained whatever he was doing throughout the day. He allowed me to follow him as he checked on his patients before surgery and there were a lot of anesthesia residents roaming around the facility as well. Dr. Fang even gave me some of his published works regarding anesthesia that I was able to use as resources. One of those that I found very fascinating was his mixture of drugs that he uses when he puts his patients under Monitored Anesthesia Care (MAC). I guess I hadn't thought much about putting the drugs all in one large syringe, as I had only seen drugs laid out individually in small syringes prior to visiting. It was this experience that really helped me form my answer 1 because I saw him use this mixture on many of his patients. I saw how it affected them and to see their satisfaction in the end seemed very rewarding for Dr. Fang. I could tell that he really cared about his doctor-patient relationship. He even told me that he still keeps in great contact with a few of his patients and he would email them to see how they're doing.

Dr. Lorna Wood also talked about this aspect with me a lot. She explained to me why she loves doing what she's doing (and also warned me not to go into medicine if you just want the good pay). She told me about her struggle of coming to America from the Philippines and having to retake tests to certify that she can practice in the United States. She said that it's very important to care about your patients because you won't enjoy your job otherwise. And despite the hard work she has to do every day, she told me it's all worth it in the end if she can help bring someone into the world or save someone's life. When I asked her my essential question and her thoughts on it, she ensured that I also mention the importance of the doctor-patient bond and trust that has to be developed in the minutes that anesthesiologists have before a surgery. Ensuring a patient's safety and comfort can't come if the doctor doesn't first care about their patients. And this brought about a different perspective to my project that I hadn't really thought about before, so for that I'm very grateful that Dr. Wood was able to share that with me.