After qualifying from medical school and doing my pre-registration house jobs I took an SHO post in a local district general hospital in the Accident and Emergency department hoping that one of the many medical specialities that I encountered would leap out at me as the perfect career choice! At the end of a stressful, but enjoyable six months I was still none the wiser! I ended up applying for a 3 year GP rotation to experience as many different specialities as possible. At the end of two and a half years I still felt lost in a sea of choices. I thoroughly enjoyed general medicine, paediatrics, and obstetrics but realised GP was not for me. After a long discussion with my paediatric consultant I eventually applied for my SHO rotation in Anaesthetics and Intensive Care Medicine and have never looked back!!
Anaesthetics finally provided me with the mix of skills and experiences that I loved. I enjoy working as a team, which is a day to day part of anaesthetic practice. Anaesthesia provides a good balance of patient contact and communication, practical procedures combined with applied physiology, pharmacology, physics and anatomy.
Throughout my training I have been given excellent support and teaching (formal and informal, one to one and in a group setting) with regular assessments, progress reports and feedback, which I have found supportive and lacking in many of the other specialities that I have worked in.
The Welsh training scheme provides rotations through a mix of both DGH and teaching hospitals throughout the whole of Wales. These hospitals all provide different and plentiful training opportunities with a wide variety of case from tertiary referral paediatrics to regional burns and plastics to basic day case procedures. We also have trainee study days twice a year to meet up with fellow colleagues from all over Wales for a day of useful lectures and to learn from other people's experiences.
I have recently had the opportunity to spend the last nine months undertaking a clinical research post. This has enabled me to learn a lot more about the principles of research, undertaking studies and presenting my data at two international meeting…a good opportunity to travel!
Overall, I find that anaesthetics is a good career for a healthy work life balance. There are many trainees who work on a part time basis and anaesthetics seems to be a career path that lends itself well to this type of training. Work can be stressful and hectic, however and most anaesthetic departments I've worked in, provide an active social programme as well as an academic one!
