This month, I was fortunate enough to get a work experience placement at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital for a week under the care of the anaesthetics department. I had managed to obtain this placement by participating in a community project where I endeavoured to improve the signs around the hospital for ease of access for all of the patients and their families who came in every day. I was fortunate enough to be able to shadow two consultant anaesthetists each day for a whole week, each giving me a different insight into their profession and what a career in medicine entails. The anaesthetists were all extremely friendly and explained in great detail exactly what they were doing when they administered drugs as either a local or general anaesthetic for the patients and then what they were monitoring while the patient was asleep. When in theatre, the anaesthetist would always send me to the surgeon who was happy to explain the procedure and the various different techniques which they had employed and adopted from other surgeons. On average, I was in theatre twice with each anaesthetist and saw a wide variety of operations ranging from ocular surgery to gastric bypasses using laporoscopic surgical techniques. Aside from the technical aspect of what I observed, I also obtained a deeper insight into the various facets of life in medicine. Teamwork and good communication was absolutely vital, as I could see from the anaesthetists reassuring both the families and the patients whilst also gathering information about the patient's history with anaesthetic. The various techniques they used varied a lot depending on the situation, as the patients varied from the elderly to teenagers. Teamwork was also of paramount importance, as could be seen in theatre, when there were several members of a team. These included the surgeons and the nurses who all had a part to play in ensuring that the operation ran as smoothly as possible. The nurses would check that the sterile field was maintained, tick a check list at the start, making sure that the surgeon had all the surgical implements he needed at his disposal and that everything else was in order. One of the consultant anaesthetists told me that the detail which they went into was more than usual, as there had recently been new guidelines. They also said that they found the new checks extremely useful, as it allowed them to check that they had given the correct antibiotics and the correct anaesthetising drugs. It also necessitated communication between the surgeon and the anaesthetist about which antibiotic needed to be used. This increased efficiency both in terms of time and resources and made the operation run very smoothly. On one of the days I also went with an anaesthetist who had the trauma list, as opposed to having an operation which had been preplanned for a long time. Whilst chatting to them while they were preparing everything, I noticed how methodical they went about their work, checking everything was working and that all of the supplies were in place with the nurses - this was another example of how teamwork and communication helped them negotiate the uncertainty that surrounded which operations they had to do and helped them carry out the operation as well as possible.
