Anesthesiology: The Technicians of Sleep Summary and Analysis

Included in Konner's E.W. surgical rotation was one week of O.R. anesthesiology. The anesthesiologist temperament was intellectual, witty and detached compared to the tough surgical type. Anesthesiologists maintain human consciousness of patients between life and death. They are subordinate to the surgeons although many view themselves as the O.R. director and surgeons their actors. Konner was assigned to Dr. Jonathan Gill who instructed the med students to find an anesthesiologist and patients prepped for surgery to sit in on. A busy nurse helped Konner start several I.V.s and the anesthesiologist Dr. Ramirez let him help in "bagging" a patient, which meant squeezing a rubber bag to pump anesthetic and oxygen by hand to a seventy-year old masked man. He watched Ramirez "intubate" him by placing a tube through...