Anaesthetics - a good career choice?

What pros and cons can you think of?

Pros:

- No clinics/full on ward rounds
- Patients are asleep
- Instant effects of what you do
- Very practical
- Rewarding to relieve pain
- Challenge to manage a patient despite the trauma of surgery
- Close working teams
- Good support from seniors
- Large no of consultant posts
- You don't have to worry about the patients as much as the surgeons do! If they're okay afterwards that's it.
- Reading the Times (joke)
- Hospital gossip (hah)

Cons:

- Many people don't think you're a real doctor
- Could get boring? (even if you specialise in ICU/OG/pain?)
- Very physics based apparently
- Long-ish training and tough exams (like most things really)
- On call and funny hours
- Can get very stressful if all goes wrong very fast
- Death and illness - getting crash called a lot

What else?

Reply 1

Custer

1

You want more pros and cons? I think you have enough :p:

If you find it interesting, its as good as any other, personally though I would prefer many others to it.

Reply 2

Fred's Dead

It is a very good career path. If you feel it suits you go for it.

Reply 3

martin101

10

add greatest suicide rates of any specialism too the list... :/

Reply 4

No Future

OP

17

martin101

add greatest suicide rates of any specialism too the list... :/

Oh yeah...forgot about that. Slight bummer.

Apparently it's the highest rate of most "successful" suicides as they know what to do....Apparently female GPs have the highest rate of attempted suicides? (I'm sure I read this somewhere??)....

Reply 5

AEH

8

ITU is developing as a specialty on its own over the next five years with both medical and intensivist exams involved. Personally, I reckon its a fantastic career pathway but that may just be me and I have some experience of it as a medical student. Only way forward is to get medical school attachments in it, get to know the people involved, read about it and hope to get a job in it when you qualify to start you off.

Reply 6

Snoodle

2

My dad is an anaesthetist!

OK here are some more points you might wish to consider that ight impact your social aspects!

You are likely to start doing 24 hour oncalls as they are starting to come back into effect, he is a consultant and is doing 3 a month, however, the only time before he did 24 hours was when he was an SHO!

Also it's a 24 hour job which means that you can get up and go and do something right in the middle of the night!

Also it means you don't have set hours of work like surgeons, it's your responsibility to look after the patient during an op, send them and bring them back to sleep no matter how long it takes!

there is good money it in. If you reach the top end you can get up to 120K, however an average consultant earns in the range of 70K to 90K which is not bad.

Training is 5 years after you chose to specialise, thats providing you pass your exams first time. They want to make it 6 years now!

It's very hard to get a perminant post these days with the NHS trying to limit their spending!

But anyway good luck!

Reply 7

No Future

OP

17

asgsoft

My dad is an anaesthetist!

OK here are some more points you might wish to consider that ight impact your social aspects!

You are likely to start doing 24 hour oncalls as they are starting to come back into effect, he is a consultant and is doing 3 a month, however, the only time before he did 24 hours was when he was an SHO!

Also it's a 24 hour job which means that you can get up and go and do something right in the middle of the night!

Also it means you don't have set hours of work like surgeons, it's your responsibility to look after the patient during an op, send them and bring them back to sleep no matter how long it takes!

there is good money it in. If you reach the top end you can get up to 120K, however an average consultant earns in the range of 70K to 90K which is not bad.

Training is 5 years after you chose to specialise, thats providing you pass your exams first time. They want to make it 6 years now!

It's very hard to get a perminant post these days with the NHS trying to limit their spending!

But anyway good luck!

Thanks for that.

Just wondered...I'm a bit confused because I was told by a couple of anaesthetists that training was 7 yrs after FY1 and FY2? :s-smilie:

Yeah, true about permanent/locum posts - hard for some.

Reply 8

Snoodle

2

well I understand that FY1 and FY2 count as your SHO years! right?

After that you go into a CCST training program which was 5 years when my dad done it! I don't know how long it is now, it might be different!

Reply 9

Philosoraptor

18

FY1 = PRHO FY2 = SHO.
However you could correctly say that the Foundation years now count as your house officer years , yes.

Reply 10

Renal

17

asgsoft

well I understand that FY1 and FY2 count as your SHO years! right?

After that you go into a CCST training program which was 5 years when my dad done it! I don't know how long it is now, it might be different!

7 years IIRC, ST1-3 in gas or acute common and then four more with the gasboard.

Reply 11

Philosoraptor

18

I have to say this connection with anaesthetics and gas (I know I know certain gases are important in anaesthetics) is a bit off-putting (I thinking more noxious stuff).

Reply 12

Helenia

20

It's not something I've totally ruled out - though I haven't done my attachment in it yet. I don't think it's much harder or easier to get specialty training in than most jobs tbh. I have no idea on stats though, so this is just a gut feeling.

They do still need consultants on call at nights for complicated things like transplants etc though - so you don't ever quite escape!

Reply 13

Egypt

9

My other half has just got a CT1 post in anaesthetics statring in August. In the Severn Deanery there were about 12 jobs with 500 applicants. In south Wales there were 18 jobs. This is a seriously competive specialty to get in to. You also now cget uncoupled jobs which means you have to apply again to continue CT3 onwards so the first job is by no means a guarantee that you'll get CT3 etc. However I suspect all the specialities are going this way.

Reply 14

Fluffy

15

Everyone I know* seems to have got rare anaesthetics CT1 jobs... BL must rock**!

*slight over exageration, I'm sure, but that now makes 3!

** either that or we interview so poorly we send people to sleep :wink:

Reply 15

Renal

17

I can think of at least four.

Reply 16

HPC

I was considering looking into Anaesthetics/ICM (am only a 2nd year so I know it's early days) but, after seeing how little an anaesthetist does during the average operation...the guy was playing solitaire for a good hour or so and the rest of the time taking calls on his mobile...I've started to think it might be a bit dull in the most part.

Anyone with any experience found otherwise?
I was initially attracted by the promise of lots of physiology, acute medicine, managing the sickest of patients and being there for patients in times of crisis.....but is most of the workload actually spent being bored in theatre and noting down measurements every half hour or so?