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What are the basic duties of an anesthesiologist?

I'm a teenager still looking for potential careers. I've always been fascinated with medicine, and I recently learned about anesthesiologists. The average pay (200-300 grand a year) and my presumed idea of what the career involves seems very interesting to me, but I can't find much information on the specifics of what they actually do. Does anyone know the basic (and extended, if possible) duties of an anesthesiologist? Personal experience would be best but if you find stats online I'll take those too. Thanks.

Public Comments

1. don't kill the patient
2. See the following website
3. American Society of Anesthesiologists - Patient Education http://www.asahq.org/patientEducation.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anesthesiologist According to the American Society of Anesthesiologists, anesthesiologists provide or participate in more than 90 percent of the 40 million anesthetics delivered in the USA annually. [1] Anesthesiologists are highly specialized physicians certified by the American Board of Anesthesiology or by the American Osteopathic Board of Anesthesiology only after completion of many years of extensive and specialized training. The goal of this training is to provide every patient with a physician capable of managing the most complicated and difficult of medical and surgical situations with life saving skills and decision-making capacities. Anesthesiologists are perioperative physicians ("peri-" meaning "all-around") who provide medical care to patients before, during, and after their surgical experience. This includes a preoperative medical evaluation of each patient before surgery, consultation and planning of the surgery with the surgical team, creating a plan for the anesthesia tailored to each individual patient, airway management, intraoperative life support and provision of pain control, intraoperative diagnostic evaluations as needed, and critical postoperative life support. This also includes medical management of preexisting medical conditions, care and management of medical or surgical complications, provision of pain management, and intensive care management as the situation warrants. Management, direction of, and performance of cardiac and pulmonary resuscitation, advanced life support, pain control, and stabilizing and preparing patients for emergency surgery are mandatory, essential, and critical skills which anesthesiologists have been trained to employ. Historically in the United States there has been a shortage of anesthesiologists. In order to better serve the population, residency positions in anesthesiology for physicians have been steadily increasing the past several years. In addition, physicians supervise ACTs, or Anesthesia Care Teams, which are composed of a supervising physician with several certified registered nurse anesthestists (CRNA's) or anesthesiology assistants (AA's), working together to provide healthcare to the population. In other areas of the country, Anesthesiologists work in what is deemed a "solo" or "MD/DO only" practice, during which they provide anesthesia in a "one on one" relationship with the patient. As perioperative physicians, anesthesiologists also work in ICU's, PACU's, Pain Clinics, infusion centers, and ambulatory surgical centers.
4. THEIR JOB IS TO MAKE SURE YOU DON'T WAKE UP IF YOU DO THEN THEY SURE AS HELL ARE MAKING WAY TOO MUCH MONEY. THEY'RE LIKE EXPENSIVE DAYCARE WORKERS!
5. Consult with the patient / family about your drug of choice to keep the patient sleeping and healthy. Keep an eye on heart rate, oxygen levels, body temperature, blood pressure, all vital signs to make sure the patient isn't having a bad reaction. Keep the patient asleep during the whole procedure and give them the wake up call....oxygen or other drugs when everything is over. Moniter their condition until they show some small sign of waking up.....
6. i am currently studying to be a nurse anesthestist which is like an anesthesiologist but the nurse version. It is an anesthesiologists job to make sure a patient undergoing any type of surgery feels comfortable and also adequately sedated during the surgery. an anesthesiologist can work anywhere from a general operating room at a hosptial to a plastic surgeons office or even an oral surgeon's office. there are a plethora of career options. you must need to be able to use statistics and also calculus to give the patient the right amount of medicine to keep them sedated. too much or too little can cause them their life. An anesthesiologist working in an operating room usually stays with the patient throughout the whole surgery to make sure the medicine levels stay constant and also their heart rate and vital signs. Prior to the surgery, the anesthesiologist usually meets with the patient and asks them a lot of questions about their overall health. if they have a small problem in their health such as a heart murmur etc, the anesthesiologist needs to take special precautions for these types of patients. anesthesiologists need great critical thinking stills to be able to think fast if something happens to go wrong during the surgery. they also have to have good people skills during the pre-surgery interview and the ability to deal with individual peoples different needs- these include allergies, body weight and fat composition (to make sure the dosage is correct) and also if they smoke etc. ultimately, it is the anesthesiologists decision whether someone can be sedated for surgery. sometimes, if the situation is non-critical at the moment, they even tell the patient to stop smoking or lose weight before the surgery to make sure everything goes smoothly.
7. Read this answer I gave a while ago: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AtMY5SraIDBo_OKPsV0T9tkjzKIX;_ylv=3?qid=20071218175058AAG0frv If you want to be a physician, go for it. You need to be close to graduating from medical school before you can decide on a specialty. (We are physicians first, anesthesiologists second) In addition to the lengthy description of a simple case in the link above, we also manage critical care patients, provide analgesia and anesthesia for women in labor and delivery, manage chronic pain patients, and other things. Good luck with whatever you choose to do in life.