I was a senior emergency medicine resident at Darnall Army Community Hospital in Fort Hood, TX, in 1992.

I wanted to do an elective rotation in anesthesia and to work closer to home because my wife and I lived 50 miles south of the military post near Austin.

My wife worked at Brackenridge Hospital in Austin, so I would be close enough to catch a few extra meals with her if I could do the rotation there.

There was a lot of resistance (bordering on hostility) to emergency physicians managing airways, but the anesthesia department at Brackenridge welcomed me.

On my first day, I was amazed to find that a nurse anesthetist was running every operating suite.

There was only one attending on duty, and he typically walked into each room for a few minutes during a case and then sat in the doctor’s lounge drinking coffee and reading the newspaper.

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