hi everyone this is lahiru and this is the basics of anesthesia series now one of the
questions that i get asked really frequently is what is anaesthesia and what do anaesthetist do
synesthesia is really the temporary and controlled loss of sensational awareness
and it's almost a prerequisite for most medical and surgical procedures these days and really that
goal of anesthesia is to facilitate surgery with minimal psychological and physiological impact to
the patient so that's really a lot of what we do now like a lot of things anesthetists pretty much
are part of controlling this process and making sure that it goes smoothly so what anaesthetist do
we use a combination of very powerful medications to help facilitate this process of making sure
that the patient is comfortable and pain-free is still for the operation and doesn't remember
anything and that's what we call the trial of anesthesia so hypnosis or amnesia analgesia and
paralysis now the interesting thing is that a lot of the medications that make a patient
amnestic analgesian paralyzed also have really far-reaching consequences to a lot of other body
systems for example one of the main medications that gives hypnosis or amnesia which is propofol
is you know amazing at doing that job but what it does it has a lot of really really
serious side effects for example propofol can cause respiratory depression or apnea as well
as decreasing cardiac function and causing you know severe the possibility of severe hypotension
likewise paralytic agents will stop your breathing by definition they attach to skeletal muscle and
prevent neuromuscular transmission there and they will stop the patient moving but also stop the
patient breathing likewise a lot of the powerful analgesic medications like morphine or fentanyl
they'll stop the patient breathing in the normal and can also have effects
of lowering the heart rate and severe bradycardia can can happen as well so as a niceness
while you are able to facilitate this combination of you know hypnosis analogies and paralysis
to keep the patient really comfortable and the patient still so the surgeon can have a safe and
effective operation it has so many complications and we're part of managing those complications so
we're able to control the ventilation artificially intubate the patient if necessary we're able to
support the blood pressure support the heart rate and make sure all of those vital parameters
that keep the patient alive are just in that right zone where the patient is still safe
and after the surgery we essentially monitor the elimination of all of these aspects hypnosis
maintaining adequate analgesia and reversing the paralysis to get the patient back to normal
or as normal as possible after the surgery now i mentioned how we get good at what we do often and
what anaesthetists do very often is maintain the life-giving or life support forces of a patient
so we maintain the airway we maintain their breathing and we maintain the circulation
or we constantly and rigorously manage the patient's abcs and these are the things that
keep a patient alive and healthy so essentially we're able to use that scope of our practice and
that expertise in many other fields so all of the experience and education and training we get in
the operating theater to keep patients safe is also something you can translate to all other
areas of medicine and life for example we can lead resuscitation teams because we're often at
that point of resuscitation the patient in a very controlled way on a daily basis because we often
are responsible for making sure patients in the most severe and painful surgical procedures are
you know analgesed and you know with well control pain we often specialize in acute and chronic pain
management likewise like most other doctors we're involved in research involved in the
hospital community to make sure that things are running well and we're very useful specialists in
all manner of foreign aid because of our diverse skill sets and one of the most important skills
i think is education because we're in theater constantly teaching our other staff our nurses
our trainees and also receiving a lot of teaching it's one of those things that we can pass on these
skills to many other different settings and different uh and different fields one of the
questions i often get asked is why did you choose this specialty from all the other specialties
and it's a bit of a tricky one there's there's so many reasons why you go into something i think
for me a lot of it was i had people that i really admired that inspired me who were anesthetists i
remember being on a surgical ward and it's a very difficult rotation there's a lot of sick patients
and whenever i needed help the anaesthetist would be there and just be so calm and able to handle
whatever problem was going on and i just thought you know what i want to be that person i want to
be that person that where you know things seem really stressful and dire they're able to go
in there and just support the abc's the vital life-giving force of the patient and get that
patient back to back to stability and i wanted to be that person that was one of the main reasons
what you'll notice with anesthesia is that the time from action to the disaster is quite short
and this is quite different to a lot of other specialties in a lot of other medical specialties
the time from action to something really bad happening can be you know days weeks to months
to years whereas in anesthesia can be as short as a few seconds and that is one of those things that
is you know can be quite confronting but rest assured that during your career you get such
intense training such good training and you are exposed to so many of these things in a day in day
out that once the time comes and you really need to manage a crisis that you'll find that you are
ready for this so i hope that gave you a brief insight into what anesthesia is and
what anesthetists do and if you enjoyed this video please subscribe with the button below
thanks