The dreaded intubation skill.

I always told myself that I was good at procedural skills. When we were practicing on models intubation seemed easy, and everyone even told me “it is way easier on a surgical patient”, “the models make it seem difficult”. I was confident going into my anesthesia clerkship rotation, but I didn’t get a single one. The staff had to step in every time. This was super disappointing, and hurt my confidence going into residency whenever I was in situations where an intubation might arise.

But then, during a PGY1 emergency block an elderly lady came in who needed to be intubated and my staff turned to me and offered me the procedure. It was tough to visualize the chords at first, but then the RT put a bit of magical pressure on the cricoid cartilage, the chords popped into view and I nailed it. I went home feeling like a hero, the med student who was with us thought I was a boss, and I learned that sometimes you just have bad luck with procedures. Sometimes the patient has difficult anatomy, sometimes the positioning isn’t right, or the staff is too hands-on or too hands-off and it just doesn’t go your way. There is usually another chance to get the skill later in your training.

– PGY3