Rat Racing at Hopkins

Week number two at the great Johns Hopkins! It occurs to me that large gatherings of highly intelligent, successful and ambitious people share a common pattern. Whether it is the highrise offices of Wall street, the late night halls of the Johns Hopkins Hospital, we are all a bit rat racers at this level. So as someone who came from (and frankly got a little used to) the hedonistic lifestyle of beach, sand and the good life in Hawaii, it feels decidedly anachronistic to be in Baltimore gunning away at a life in academic medicine. Will I find it to be all that I wanted it to be? One in which I could have prestige, power and “meaning” in what I do? Or do I long for a more balanced lifestyle being stretched but not to the breaking point? I have always made choices that seem extreme and adapted to them. It will be interesting to see what happens the next 3 years.

Why people who like talking to patients should go into Anesthesiology

Cool study I came across in my reading by Egbert et al called “The Value of the preoperative visit by the anesthetist” which showed that a comparison of two groups of patients 1) those who received pentobarbital (a sedative) and 2) those who just had a preop visit by an anesthesiologist the group with the preop visit had lower rates of drowsiness (26% compared to 30%), nervousness (40% compared to 61%) and higher rates of feeling adequately prepared for their surgery (65%> 48%) and that doing both doesn’t really help you too much (people feel about the same level of nervousness and adequate preparedness while feeling more drowsy)

Cool eh!?