What I Was Not Necessarily Taught About Anesthesia 3: read. laugh. learn‪.‬

Initially beginning as a humble idea that was literally 2 ½ typed pages of words aimed at letting SRNAs know they are not alone in their angst, and later not really knowing how many books I’d eventually sell (if any), I only printed 500 copies of What I Was Not necessarily Taught About Anesthesia. Truthfully, I hadn’t any idea at all of what to think of it, then. At first several of my students bought it and were very complimentary; however, I attributed their positive responses to subservience in the face of someone (me) able [if I wanted] to make life a living hell for them. But finally, after opening my website to the public and selling a book to an SRNA in New Jersey on the very first day it became functional (with no advertisements or anything), I began to realize that [perhaps] there was indeed a market out there for genuine teaching, similar to the instruction of a preceptor, that takes into account all of the variables involved with learning anesthesia and helps to reassure the student that not only are they [most likely] on the right track, but also that they are probably in a better position than I actually was at the same point in my-own education.

“3 – read. laugh. learn.” includes everything that my first and second book did, only with more elaboration where it may have been previously obscure and/or ambiguous – in addition to an expansion of tidbits, caveats, pearls, and wisdom that I felt were important enough for the pupil of anesthesia to be further mindful of – all in the hope that the anticipation, recognition, and identification of such real-world situations, not to mention the appropriate responses, could somehow be presented to the student prior to their encountering such happenings in the reality that unfortunately lies somewhat outside of the textbook; which [for good reason] focuses immensely on the science of anesthesia, but unfortunately actually gives very little instruction in the ART of administering an anesthetic. Specifically, it has well-over 140,000 words, or [better yet] approximately 45,000 more than the “2nd Edition.” But, more important than any of this, and given the seriousness of what we do for a living, it both reminds and encourages us to snicker at our own errors, blunders, and/or lapses in judgment (assuming no patient harm, of course), lest any of us were to ever erroneously think that we were the perfect anesthesia provider.