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Ambulatory Anesthesiology
reetings from the UCLA Department of Anesthesiology. We are a vibrant Department comprised of approximately 80 clinical faculty and 88 interns and residents (22 per year) in a 4-year categorical residency, along with fellows in cardiac anesthesia, pain management, and liver transplantation anesthesia. The PGY-1 (internship) year is spent in the preliminary Internal Medicine Program jointly sponsored by the nearby Greater Los Angeles VA Medical Center and neighboring Cedars Sinai Medical Center.
The UCLA Health System 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. In addition, the UCLA Hospitals include our 450-bed tertiary/quaternary Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center (RRUMC), the Jules Stein Eye Institute, and the very large Medical Plaza (six-story ambulatory care complex including a 12-room Surgery Center) on the UCLA Westwood campus, and the 270 bed Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center and Orthopaedic Hospital approximately 5 miles west on Wilshire Boulevard.
The UCLA campus 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 physicians, trainees, and 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. Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center is an integrated, UCLA-owned hospital, which emphasizes orthopaedics, spine surgery, general surgery, head & neck surgery, plastic surgery, and gynecological surgery, and has a very active regional anesthesia program. Regional anesthesia is also emphasized with the Acute Pain and Regional Anesthesia Service at RRUMC and for the many extremity, urological, and other surgeries at the Westwood campus Surgery Center.
The clinical and educational experiences at the UCLA Hospitals are supplemented by elective rotations to affiliated general medical, pediatric, and veteran's hospitals in the second and third years. Obstetrical anesthesia experience is gained at RRUMC, along with rotations to a busy obstetric service in an affiliated hospital. Critical Care rotations are offered at RRUMC and our affiliated VA hospital. To prepare our residents for the newly expanded opportunities in perioperative medicine, we have a very active Preoperative/Postoperative management team at RRUMC, consisting daily of a faculty member and 3 housestaff who together evaluate and manage patients before an after their surgeries and interventional procedures at RRUMC. The residents on this assignment 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 Human Patient Simulator Center is heavily utilized for introductory clinical skills, for training in critical clinical incident recognition and management, and for team training.
Research training is readily available, either by collaboration with a faculty clinical investigator or by dedication of time to one of the seven major basic science laboratories in the Department, which are in the process of training over 25 PhD students and postdoctoral fellows. The Department has an annual spring academic evening at UCLA for all residents and fellows receiving research time and/or support in the Department, to present their work to their Department colleagues. In addition, 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 addition to residents caring for patients in the UCLA Hospitals under supervision of faculty, the Department also has an excellent team of staff physicians and CRNA’s, along with faculty physicians providing personally administered anesthesia care, to care for our patients who are not assigned to teaching rooms. The OR Directors for all of our UCLA hospitals OR suites are anesthesiologists. We collaborate daily with our surgical and nursing colleagues to maintain a supurb environment for professional education and growth, as well as workplace collaboration and harmony for all members of our Department and for those with whom we work.
In summary, the exciting field of Anesthesiology, in which the disciplines of clinical physiology and pharmacology are applied to all body systems to alleviate pain and 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. You will enjoy working in the pleasant physical surroundings of the UCLA campus and the nearby city of Santa Monica, enveloped within in the exciting city of Los Angeles. We look forward to meeting you and working with you to achieve your goals.
Sincerely,