Visiting students will have the same experience and expectations as home students, though it is up to the discretion of the visitor’s own institution if they will grant the student AI credit or not.

Curriculum

Students will rotate through the Preoperative Assessment Clinic, General OR, Outpatient Surgery Center, Pediatric OR, Regional Anesthesia/Acute Pain Service and Cardiothoracic OR, participating in the care of patients in each area. Students can elect to spend a day in Obstetrical Anesthesia or Chronic Pain Management as well. Students will follow and manage patients throughout the perioperative experience including; completing a focused History and Physical for perioperative evaluation, anesthetic case planning, intra-operative management, postoperative assessment and outcomes. Emphasis is placed on reviewing physiology and pharmacology, while understanding how a patient's medical condition influences the anesthetic plan. Students will learn mask ventilation, tracheal intubation, peripheral vascular access and arterial line placement skills. Students will be required to be an integral member of the inpatient call team. This will expose them to Code Blue events, Level 1 trauma patients presenting to the Emergency Department and a broad array of urgent and emergent surgical procedures. There is a mandatory Self-Directed Learning Presentation that is a component of all Acting Internships.

Program Objectives

The goal of the Unit VI 4th year medical student elective is to allow the student to gain familiarity and facility with thought process and procedures which anesthesiologists use to care for patients. Therefore the objectives are as follows:

  • Demonstrate the ability to evaluate patients being admitted independently, obtain their own H and P, prepare daily progress notes and present their findings, investigate medical literature, and provide evidence based assessments and plans to their healthcare teams. Acting Interns will be responsible for a focused History and Physical/preoperative evaluation for operative cases assigned to them. Based on reading, lectures and research AI’s will formulate an anesthetic plan and present the plan to an upper level resident. Based on feedback by the upper level resident and attending they will modify their plan.
  • Demonstrate the ability to be the primary contact for their patients as a PGY-1 would, with adequate supervision, in terms of clinical assessment and management, performance of procedures, patient and family education and communication, patient care coordination with all healthcare team members.
  • Demonstrate safe and effective transitions of care (hand-offs). This will be achieved when the AI transports the patient to the PACU in the presence of the healthcare team.
  • Demonstrate the ability to write admission and other orders for their patients when applicable.
  • Demonstrate Self-Directed Learning through a scholarly assignment such as topic review, conference presentation, leading morning report, etc.

Conferences

Medical students will have several opportunities for didactic teaching. In addition to our resident didactics (Monday, Tuesday and Thursday) and Grand Rounds (Wednesday 6:45 am) there is a separate lecture and simulation series for medical students. There will be 3 simulation sessions in the Center for Applied Learning covering: monitors, machine check and basic simulation scenarios. Topics included in the medical student lecture series are as follows:

  • Intravenous anesthetics
  • Volatile Anesthetics
  • Opioids
  • Neuromuscular blockers
  • Airway Management
  • Monitoring
  • Preoperative Assessment
  • Fluids, blood products
  • Local Anesthetics
  • Spinal and epidural anesthesia
  • Autonomic Nervous System
  • Cardiovascular Disease
  • Pulmonary Disease
  • Central Nervous System
  • Trauma