How to Answer: What would you tell your adult patient who is scared of anesthesia?
Advice and answer examples written specifically for an Anesthesiology Residency job interview.
3. What would you tell your adult patient who is scared of anesthesia?
What You Need to Know
This is a common problem you will run into. Unfortunately, because of hospital benchmarks requiring fast case turnover, you will not get to a ton of time to talk to patients in the preoperative area. Nevertheless, patients are almost always scared before surgery and are trusting their lives to you, a person they've just met. Therefore, you should quickly identify the source of the concern and address it appropriately.
Written by Ryan Brown on December 28th, 2020
Answer Example
"I would ask him if there was a specific concern such as the safety of anesthesia, having needles poke him, or being awake for surgery and unable to move. Once I identified the source of his concerns, I would provide a reasoned explanation and reassurance. For example, if he is concerned about waking up during the surgery, I would assure him this is a very rare phenomenon, mostly seen in movies but not in real life. We have several monitors to help us detect if you're moving from deep sleep to lighter stages of sleep including the BIS monitor which monitors electric activity in your brain."
Written by Ryan Brown on December 28th, 2020