The Division of Anesthesia and Perioperative Medicine in the Department of Surgery and Perioperative Care is committed to improving the care and safety of patients preparing for and undergoing surgery as well as to pioneering approaches for the management of chronic pain. The division partners with the department to host many faculty development events and continuing medical education offerings.
Division faculty support the school’s educational mission through a variety of programs.
In undergraduate medical education, the division’s service provides two-week and four-week elective rotations dedicated to career exploration in anesthesia for second- and fourth-year Dell Medical School students.
Fourth-year visiting students from Liaison on Committee on Medical Education- or American Osteopathic Association-accredited institutions are eligible to apply for the acting internship in anesthesiology. See information for visiting students, which includes a list of all available acting internships.
Faculty physicians provide care in Austin and the surrounding area.
Physicians in the division provide excellent anesthesia and perioperative care for surgical patients throughout Austin and the surrounding area. The division’s structure, expertise and care team philosophy allow them to further build out the service delivery model so that as the facilities they serve expand and grow, they can support that growth while maintaining the highest level of patient care.
In 2018, Ascension Seton, in partnership with the department, launched the Perioperative Surgical Home. This perioperative medicine program — composed of anesthesiologists, internal medicine hospitalists, advanced practice providers and other allied health providers — aims to provide perioperative assessment and global optimization of complex surgical patients.
The division’s research expertise spans many areas, but focuses include perioperative medicine and value-based care.
The division is involved with several research projects, including working to increase understanding of accurate yet efficient patient preoperative risk-stratification in order to better optimize an individual patient’s medical comorbidities, including frailty, prior to surgery and anesthesia, thus improving clinical practice.
Investigators within the division are exploring the goal of providing value-based care using a validated group education and exercise program for patients with lower-extremity osteoarthritis as both a clinically and cost-effective treatment.
