Research in Anesthesia Protocols
Specialty Preview Through the SRP: Research in Anesthesia Protocols
By Alan Thong, MS 4
Alan Thong
Going into the summer after my first year of medical school, I knew that I wanted to take some time to explore possible specialty interests. Looking for the right mentor and project was difficult, though. Perusing the booklet of Summer Research Project proposals, there seemed to be a number of interesting projects in specialties that appealed to me. Many seemed manageable enough to accomplish something within the short summer time span. In the end, I joined a research project that offered not only a research question in a specialty that I was interested in, but also a great mentor.
When I interviewed with Dr. John Ellis of the Department of Anesthesia and Critical Care, it was clear that he was as excited about working on the project as I was. Our ultimate goal would be to see if an anesthesia protocol using processed EEG monitoring to titrate anesthetic administration could facilitate perioperative beta blockade. We went to the operating room and, over the course of an afternoon, Dr. Ellis not only explained the questions underlying the project, but also showed me the central hypothesis in action during an actual case. This interactive introduction to the research project was only a preview of how hands-on the rest of my summer experience would be.
My role in the project was to coordinate a prospective randomized trial of a monitored anesthesia protocol using processed electroencephalogram parameters. Over the course of the summer, we attempted to determine if such a protocol would increase anesthesiologists’ use of perioperative beta blockade. I got the chance to work on everything from the Institutional Review Board approval process to recruiting patients to running protocol cases in the operating room.
All along the way, Dr. Ellis was available, offering to help in every part of the process. We often stayed late beyond the day’s cases to discuss manuscript drafts or plan the next day’s cases. As a mentor, he always made sure that I had the resources and information to keep the project moving forward. And despite the busy research schedule, I also managed to spend some time shadowing Dr. Ellis in his daily practice and preview anesthesia as a specialty well before my third-year rotations.
By the end of the summer, we had enough data to do a preliminary analysis and Dr. Ellis offered to help put together a submission to one of the national anesthesia meetings. Nearly a year after I first started to work with Dr. Ellis, we traveled to San Francisco to present our abstract and poster at the International Anesthesia Research Society Annual Meeting. It was a nice way to cap off the whole Summer Research Program experience.
