Anesthesiology is a very complicated study in the medical field.Many people want to pursue this career but do they really have what it takes to get through medical school and be able to get that license to practice medicine. I have been interested in this field, especially becoming an anesthesiologist, for some time know. When I started looking into a job in anesthesiology the things that caught my eye were the salary, the work hours, and the purpose of my job. I knew from that point on that this was the career that I want to pursue.
When I first started looking into this job the first thing that caught my eye was of course the salary. The average salary for an anesthesiologist $265,990 nationally. (29-1061 Anesthesiologists) . When beginning the job you will be making less money than someone who has more experience under their belt. When I look into jobs, the salary is one is the most important thing to me. I don’t want to feel like slave, if I’m gonna go to school for years and be doing hard work in the hospital setting the pay needs to reflect that. To me the pay for an anesthesiologist is plenty for the work that is assigned.
When looking into the job I also noticed the hours. There is really no way to say how many hours you will be working a week but the average is somewhere around 55 hours (Department of Anesthesiology). Just most other physician there will always be a chance to be called in to work at any time. This is really the only thing bad about this job. I want to be able to spend time with my family and friends, but this career can make that tough. With all of the hard work and long shifts something called burnout can happen. Burnout syndrome is, “A process of long term exhaustion, characterized by a lack of energy that could result in failure to accomplish daily work.”( Freire Et Al., 2016). These long work days concern me but I’m willing to go through the trouble because of my passion for this job.
I found out about this job when I was a freshman in highschool and I was just fascinated with this job and I wanted to learn all about it. As I learned about the job I found that this job was very fitting for the kind of person I am. I want to be the person that helps a patient way more than they realize sometimes. Anesthesiologist take pride in their work they love making people get through a surgery pain free. A anesthesiologist by the name Dr. Al Hackel changed the way I look at anesthesia. Dr. Al Hackel taught his students the,” values of honesty, integrity, and a patient-first mentality,”( Mai Et Al., 2016) this really helped me understand the purpose of what I want to do. The purpose of this job is to help people be pain free during and after a surgery and that sounds like the life I want to pursue.
Being an anesthesiologist is not easy, but after you look into the salary, the work hours, and the overall purpose of what you’ll be doing you might tell yourself you can do it. Even though this job brings a weight with it I still want to become an anesthesiologist because of my passion for this job. I want to help people help people and nothing is going to stand in my way of becoming an anesthesiologist.
Works Cited
- Freire, Patrícia Larrosa, et al. “Trends in Burnout Syndrome and Emotional Factors: An Assessment of Anesthesiologists in Southern Brazil, 2012.” Psychology, Health & Medicine, vol. 21, no. 4, June 2016, pp. 413–423. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/13548506.2016.1139143.
- Mai, Christine L., et al. “Pediatric Transport Medicine and the Dawn of the Pediatric Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine Subspecialty: An Interview with Pioneer Dr. Alvin Hackel.” Pediatric Anesthesia, vol. 26, no. 5, May 2016, pp. 475–480. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1111/pan.12880.
- “29-1061 Anesthesiologists.” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 30 Mar. 2018, www.bls.gov/oes/currenT/oes291061.htm.
- “FAQ.” Department of Anesthesiology, www.med.unc.edu/anesthesiology/education/residency/copy_of_faq/#workHours.
