Exit Interview

(1) What is your essential question, and what are your answers?  What is your best answer and why?

EQ: How can an anesthesiologist best ensure a patient's safety and comfort for surgery?

Answer 1: An anesthesiologist can best ensure a patient's safety and comfort for surgery by being well-versed on the drugs used for surgery to maintain body functions.

Answer 2: An anesthesiologist can best ensure a patient's safety and comfort for surgery by monitoring a patient's vital body functions through use and full knowledge of anesthesia machines.

Answer 3: An anesthesiologist can best ensure a patient's safety and comfort by reviewing the patient's history and background.

My best answer is my Answer 1, because drugs are a major part of an anesthesiologist's job. They can interpret readings from their machines and look through patient charts to plan for their anesthesia care, but without having drugs and knowing how to use them, they can't proceed with their task. They can determine if the patient is having trouble breathing or if the patient is uncomfortable with the help of monitors, but could do nothing to help that if they don't have the tools to help them.

(2) What process did you take to arrive at this answer?

Once I had narrowed down my 3 answers, I started asking the medical professionals that I interviewed what they thought. The response that stood out to me most was that of Dr. Imelda Murillo. She said that you can't call yourself an anesthesiologist if you don't know how to handle the drugs. There are so many drugs to understand and so many methods to use them depending on the individual patient. With other research, too, I have found that drugs are the key to anesthesia. A patient cannot be rendered unconscious without medication and cannot feel less pain without the aid of medication. Monitors are to show the effects of the drugs and the condition of the patient throughout, but the patient cannot be helped if not given a mixture of medications.

(3) What problems did you face?  How did you resolve them?

I had trouble narrowing down 3 answers, let alone a best answer. There are so many layers to the job of an anesthesiologist that summarizing them to concise wording proved difficult. However, what helped me the most were my mentorship experiences and interviews. This is why I decided to do extra mentorship hours for my IC 1 and shadowed under different anesthesiologists from other hospitals for my IC 2. I wanted to get a better idea of what anesthesiologists do. Just by watching them and talking to them I gained more insight than just reading articles that have the basics or generalize the job that they really do.

(4) What are the two most significant sources you used to answer your essential question and why?

My interview and shadowing experience with Dr. Zhuang T. Fang from UCLA was a major contributor to my findings. I was exposed to so much more than I had imagined and I was lucky enough to have help from someone that not only is an experienced anesthesiologist, but also a professor that teaches doctors how to specialize in anesthesiology. He helped me understand the more complex concepts and it definitely enhanced my project.

Other major resources I used were 2 books: Anesthesiology and Anesthesia Crash Course. Though simply titled, they both put seemingly confusing and overwhelming concepts into layman's terms. This helped me understand at least the basics as to the tools, machines, medications, and duties of an anesthesiologist and how they do it. In fact, Anesthesiology included a chapter that talked about Mallampati Classification, which I had used for my hook activity.