Anaesthesiology: The Operating Room

Department: Anesthesiology
Supervisors: Bart J.D.W.R. Ramaker MD, Herman G.D.Hendriks, MD PhD

Introduction:
Anesthesiologists are perioperative medical specialists who provide medical care to patients before, during, and after surgical procedures. Airway management, intraoperative life support, and pain control are essential skills. Besides their work in the perioperative field as physicians and nowadays often as managers too, anesthesiologists are involved in Intensive Care Units, Postoperative Anesthesia Care Units, Pain Clinics, and last but not least emergency medicine including the helicopter Mobile Medical Team.
Besides their clinical work Anesthesiologists are involved in teaching and research. In the University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG) residents and staff members are trained in a hypermodern Skills Lab where all kinds of situations are simulated. Research in the UMCG is focused on pharmocokinetics (what the body does to a drug), pharmacodynamics (what a drug does to the body), neuroscience, hemodynamics and on blood coagulation.

Training:
In the Netherlands, after your medical degree, you have to go through a five year residency including four exams. Training encompasses the full scope of perioperative medcine, including preoperative anesthesiological examination, life support durante operatione, and postoperative recovery. Pillars of anesthesiological training are physiology and pharmacology. After residency, some anesthesiologists accomplish additional training in cardiac anesthesiology, pediatric anesthesiology, intensive care, pain management or emergency care.

Workshop:
The workshop anesthesiology provides a great opportunity to work in a “real” operating room in our Skills Lab. Participants will deal with various aspects of anesthesia including anesthesia equipment. Participants not only monitor a patient during a routine surgical procedure but also have to solve some life threatening problems. Of course, you will be assisted by trained anesthesiologists to keep the patient safe and sound.