Several days ago, I was attending a collaborative meeting of transplant physicians, nurses, a pharmacist and hospital administrators. Two surgeons were present: a cardiovascular surgeon and a liver (and kidney) transplant surgeon. Also present were the medical directors of the lung transplant service (a pulmonologist) and the kidney transplant service (a nephrologist). I was representing the anesthesiology teams that cover all the various transplant procedures. We were gathered to come up with a better way to communicate – from the medical directors and surgeons to the anesthesiologists – the various immunosuppression therapy regimens required for each patient.
As the discussion was under way, one of the medical directors made the comment that physician anesthesiologists were like nurses. I must admit that I was flabbergasted. I disagreed, replying that, no, we practiced medicine, like all physicians. The medical director tried to clarify his statement by adding, “You know, you give medications,...
