Clinical Training

Subspecialty training at Virginia Mason includes extensive experience in cardiac, neurosurgical, vascular, and other subspecialties, as well as a rigorous exposure to complex airway techniques; perioperative perineural analgesia techniques; and two-dimensional and three-dimensional transesophageal echocardiography techniques.

Obstetric Anesthesia: Swedish Medical Center is a high-volume obstetrics center, with more than 11,000 deliveries in 2019. Residents rotate at the First Hill hospital, the high-risk obstetrics center for Seattle.

Pediatric Anesthesia: Seattle Children's Hospital is a 400-bed hospital that is consistently rated among the best pediatric hospitals in the country by U.S. News and World Report. More than 15,000 inpatient and outpatient surgeries are performed annually at SCH.

Critical Care: Harborview Medical Center is the only Level 1 trauma center in the Pacific Northwest, providing this essential service for Washington, Alaska, Montana, and Idaho. Virginia Mason anesthesia residents work alongside residents in surgery, emergency medicine and anesthesiology from the University of Washington and other training programs in the region.

The elective month is flexible by design. Residents have many choices for their elective at Virginia Mason and at other institutions. Popular options include:

• Echocardiography/POCUS. In-depth education on transesophageal and transthoracic echocardiography, as well as point-of-care lung, abdominal and vascular ultrasound (POCUS). Case volume and availability is such that interested residents can choose to take the basic perioperative transesophageal echocardiography certification exam.

• Systems-Based Practice. Residents participate in several multi-day Virginia Mason Production System quality improvement events such as kaizen events and Rapid Process Improvement Workshops (RPIWs). This provides outstanding exposure to the process of analyzing waste and inefficiency in medical systems, and a team-based approach to developing solutions.

• Global Health. Virginia Mason residents have rotated to a variety of sites around the globe, serving as clinicians and as teachers for anesthesia providers in the region.

• Hyperbaric Medicine. Virginia Mason's Center for Hyperbaric Medicine is the biggest in Western Washington and the primary regional center for treatment of decompression sickness, carbon monoxide poisoning and other emergencies.