Greetings from the UCLA Department of Anesthesiology.  We are a vibrant Department comprised of approximately 60 clinical faculty and 62 residents, along with fellows in cardiac anesthesia, pain management, and liver transplantation anesthesia.  The UCLA Center for the Health Sciences consists of the Schools of Medicine, Dentistry, Nursing, and Public Health, the Brain Research Institute, the Jerry Lewis Neuromuscular Research facility, and the Neuropsychiatric Institute and Hospital, along with the UCLA Medical Center that includes a 500-bed tertiary/quaternary hospital, the Jules Stein Eye Institute, and the very large Medical Plaza (six-story ambulatory care complex including a 12-room Surgery Center).  We are very fortunate that the medical complex occupies the south end of the beautiful UCLA campus in the Westwood section of Los Angeles, adjacent to the city of Santa Monica and the Pacific Ocean.  All of the superb athletic, intellectual, and cultural offerings of the campus are available to Medical Center staff, as well as the exciting cultural, sports, and recreational activities of the world-class city of Los Angeles.  Whether urban, ocean, mountain, or desert activities suit an individual's tastes, the beautiful climate and ever-exciting Southern California region support the excellent experience at UCLA. 

Our training program is focused upon preparing our residents broadly to be superbly trained for the entire range of anesthetic experiences he or she may encounter after completing the UCLA program.  This includes everything from complex transplantation surgery, since we have a large number of liver, heart, heart-lung, kidney, and pancreas transplantations, to the full range of ambulatory surgery which comprises up to 65% of surgery in the US today, to obstetric anesthesia, pediatric anesthesia, pain management, and critical care.  The experiences at the UCLA Medical Center are supplemented by elective rotations to affiliated general medical, pediatric, and veteran's hospitals in the second and third years.  To prepare our residents for the newly expanded opportunities in perioperative medicine, we have a very active Preoperative Evaluation Suite that sees up to 700 patients per month who are scheduled for admission on the day of surgery.  A faculty member is assigned daily to the Preoperative Evaluation Suite so that educational input is assured.  A faculty member is similarly assigned daily to the Post-anesthesia Care (Recovery) Unit, so the resident on that assignment will also receive tutorial as well as bedside teaching while delivering clinical care. 

The didactic aspect of the residency training program is similarly comprehensive, and consists of coordinated weekly educational lectures covering the range of anesthesia knowledge, resident-faculty key word presentations, morbidity/mortality conferences, visiting professors from other universities, organized textbook chapter review sessions, subspecialty journal clubs, research seminars, and the like.  Our whole-body human simulator laboratory is heavily utilized for introductory clinical skills and for our advanced residents, training in critical clinical incident recognition and management. 

Research training is also routinely available, either by collaboration with a faculty clinical investigator or by dedication of time to one of the six major basic science laboratories in the Department, which are in the process of training over 25 PhD students and postdoctoral fellows.  The Department supports the Western Anesthesia Residents Conference, at which resident or post-residency fellowship research is regularly presented each spring.  Through the UCLA STAR program or the Interdisciplinary Program in the Neurosciences, those interested in an academic career can combine residency training with achievement of a PhD in any one of the laboratories in the School of Medicine over a 6-7 year combined program. 

In summary, the exciting field of Anesthesiology, in which the disciplines of clinical pharmacology and physiology are applied to all body systems to not only alleviate pain, but to manage the extreme functional perturbations caused by the disruptions of modern surgery and invasive procedures, is waiting to be mastered by you in the supportive environment of the UCLA Department of Anesthesiology in the pleasant physical surroundings of the UCLA campus in the exciting city of Los Angeles.  We look forward to meeting you and assisting you to achieve your goals. 

Sincerely, 

Patricia A. Kapur 
Professor and Chair