ASA Rural Access to Anesthesia Care Scholarship
Emily Sharpe
I just discovered this opportunity last week when I found out Jake Eiler, a MS4, was a scholarship recipient. It sounds like an amazing rotation! His experience is summarized at the end of this email.
If you are interested in finding out more about this opportunity visit: http://www.asahq.org/msd/ruralScholarshipCriteria.htm
Also a reminder that the FAER Medical Student Anesthesia Research Fellowship application is due February 1, 2010. More information can be found here:
http://www.faer.org/programs/students/medical.html
Thanks Jake for sharing! If you have any questions about his experience, contact him with questions.
Medical Student scholarship for Rural Anesthesiology through ASA
Location: Crosby, MN
Physician: Dr. Mark Gujer
Completed in November 2010 by Jake Eiler ( 320.492.5343 or jakee...@gmail.com)
Experience: Crosby, MN is a small town in central lakes Minnesota near Brainerd with a population of 2243, but a very active rural surgery program with 12 board certified surgeons including a fellowship program for Minimally Invasive Surgery through the Minnesota Institute of Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIMIS) which was established by two local surgeons. Dr. Gujer is the only anesthesiologist and has a variety of duties at the hospital.
My experience was an excellent variety of cases and work that was a great learning experience. Time was spent doing cases individually one:one with Dr. Gujer in the OR for sick patients or higher level ASA cases. Also, Dr. Gujer saw multiple surgical candidates in a separate pre-operative clinic to identify any evaluations needed before surgery and to medically optimize patients prior to surgery. Also, Dr. Gujer has a interventional pain clinic with multiple procedures, although this may be decreasing somewhat but he does radiofrequency ablations, vertebroplasties, and multiple nerve blocks and pain consultations. He also does a significant amount of regional anesthesia with nerve blocks for OR patients, and manages an acute pain service following surgery for inpatients. He is also a constant troubleshooter for any CRNA cases in the OR that have difficulty and also consults and manages patients with the ICU. Overall he works throughout the pre-op and post-op areas if patients have difficulties and concerns.
Also, a very significant aspect of his position is administrative. He is the director of surgical services, the director of EMS services and serves on multiple committees of the executive board regarding policy making, and serves as a physician consultant to the executive board to give medical perspective on financial decisions. This is a key component to this rotation, as it is significant to see the role that a surgical department and anesthesiologist play in a rural medical facility.
Overall, my experience was excellent! A typical day consisted of a variety of work from one area to another. We may start by doing regional blocks on patients in the AM around 6am, but as a student I would be directly assisting or doing the nerve block learning both ultrasound and nerve stimulator techniques along with landmarks. For cases I was able to do workups and develop plans and use multiple ways of taking care of the patients in the OR. For airways we used common DL, but also learned multiple variety of airway techniques including multiple intubations by fiberoptic scope, lma, multiple videoblades and lightwand.
Many cases were directly supervised by Dr. Gujer and he does not oversee CRNAs. There are opportunities to work with CRNAs if you wish if there are interesting cases or you just want more time in the OR on slow days. The CRNAs are great at teaching too, and mostly give you as much independence as you feel comfortable with, and are more than willing to let you place blocks, spinals, epidurals etc. They often have a SRNA, so they have experience teaching.
The ASA has a scholarship opportunity (http://www.asahq.org/msd/ruralScholarshipCriteria.htm ) to offset any costs of this experience, with a maximum reimbursement of $750. The hospital and Dr. Gujer were very helpful in finding a housing situation that was convenient, and mine was outstanding. You are welcome at their educational conferences, which are often at local resorts.
Around Crosby there are extensive lakes and areas to explore outdoors. There are beautiful bike trails that are developed, and you are only about 15 miles from Brainerd area where there are many more restaurants and activities.
At present time, this is not yet an accredited rotation, but we are actively pursuing that so check with curriculum to see. Overall, this was an awesome experience and I would definitely recommend it to anyone.