3 Anesthesia Terms To Know Before Shadowing A CAA

Induction of anesthesia is the process of using drugs to put a patient to sleep. The drugs can be administered through a variety of routes including inhalation, intramuscular, and intravenous, with intravenous being the most common. Intravenous drug administration means the medication is pushed through an IV line directly into a patient's vein.

Prior to induction, an anesthesia professional ensures all required monitors are attached to the patient including a pulse oximeter, blood pressure cuff, and ECG leads. After the monitors are on and the patient is asleep, the CAA tapes the eyes closed to prevent corneal abrasions to the eyes. At that time, the airway is managed through a variety of methods such as bag mask ventilation, endotracheal tube (ETT) placement, or laryngeal mask airway (LMA) placement.

Following induction of anesthesia is the maintenance phase, where the patient is now asleep and ready for the surgical team to begin the procedure.

Maintenance entails keeping the patient adequately anesthetized, managing the patient's pain, ensuring optimal surgical conditions, and maintaining the patient's hemodynamic status. Here a some examples of tasks you may witness the CAA perform:

When the surgical procedure is complete, the CAA then begins the process of waking up the patient.

Before the volatile anesthetic may be turned off and the ETT safely removed from a patient's trachea, the patient must be fully reversed from any paralyzing medications that were used to secure the airway or to keep the patient still during the procedure. The patient must be able to breath on their own spontaneously without support of a ventilator. The patient also receives medication to prevent post-operative nausea and pain.

Emergence from anesthesia is not like an on/off switch and requires skillful timing to ensure a timely and smooth wake up. Once the patient is breathing on their own and is hemodynamically stable, they are transported to the post anesthesia care unit (PACU).

Knowing these three words of anesthesia jargon will provide a useful roadmap for each case you observe while shadowing. Don't forget that after you shadow, you'll want to make a note of everything you witnessed. You can instantly download our Shadowing Tracker resource!

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