Perspectives Winter/Spring-2017

26 • NOVA SOUTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY The Classroom vs. the Operating Room Anesthesiologist Assistant TAMPA BY LORI DESORBO, M.M.SC. , CAA, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR AND ANESTHESIOLOGIST ASSISTANT The Anesthesiologist Assistant (AA) Program provides faculty mem- bers with a unique teaching experience. The certified anesthesiologist assistants (CAA) who work in the program provide lectures in a classroom setting and in simulation labs to prepare the students for their clinical rotations. They also have the opportunity to work and spend their day in an operating room participating in the care of patients undergoing various procedures while also instructing the same students educated in the program. Teaching in the classroom is very different than teaching in the operating room, and there is no formal preparation for becoming a clinical preceptor. The clinical preceptor duty to the students on that day is to provide them with the best learning environment possible, as well as provide the best care possible to the patients. It is a difficult task, but the faculty members do it with great pride. Being an anesthesiologist assistant professor is very similar to being a professor in any other program when talking about classroom educa- tion. Professors give lectures, create PowerPoint presentations, assign reading, answer questions, and grade quizzes and exams. There are many discussions in the classroom and in the labs on possible anes- thetic scenarios encountered in the operating room, including the infinite number of ways to handle these scenarios. Anesthesia is not black and white, and the experience of professors plays an immense role in these discussions. All of the AA faculty mem- bers possess at least five years of clinical experience before they become a professor and continue to work in a hospital setting as a CAA. Julia Chung prepares to administer anesthesia drugs.