Anesthesiologist
From Free net encyclopedia
An anesthesiologist (American English), or anaesthetist (British English), is a medical doctor trained to administer anesthesia.
Training varies depending on the country. In Australia, for example, training is overseen by the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists. In England training is overseen by the Royal College of Anaesthetists.
In the United States, anesthesiologists are medical doctors (MD) or osteopathic physicians (DO). Anesthesiologists complete a four year undergraduate program, four years of medical school training, a one year internship, and three years of postgraduate training in the form of an anesthesiology residency. The three year residency training encompasses the full scope of perioperative medicine, including pre-operative medical evaluation, intraoperative life support and pain control, post-operative recovery, ICU medicine, and chronic and acute pain management. Anesthesiologists can choose to sub-specialize in areas such as cardiac or obstetric anesthesia, pain management, or intensive care unit medicine.
Anaesthetists in the United Kingdom are doctors with five years undergraduate training. They usually enter anaesthetics from other specialties, such as Medicine or Accident and Emergency. Specialist training then takes at least seven years. It is overseen by the Royal College of Anaesthetists.
Occupational hazards
Anesthesiologists are the most likely physicians to become addicted to prescription medications. Traditionally, this has been blamed on easy access to opioids. However, other physicians, such as neurologists and oncologists with ready access to painkillers are not as likely as anesthesiologists to become addicts. A University of Florida study sampled the air above patient's faces during surgeries. The samplings revealed high concentrations of the same opioids that the anesthesiologist has intravenously administered to the patients. The patients were exhaling a small amount of the drugs that they had been given. The study suggests that anesthesiologists, who usually work near the patient's head, repeatedly inhale small doses of the drugs they administer, creating a susceptibility to drug abuse. (Gold et al., 2004)