First experience with private practice… wow

I’m a CA-2 at a big academic center that went to a big academic center for med school. Before this rotation, I had basically zero experience with private practice anesthesiology. Doing a rotation that is staffed by a well-regarded PP group and holy cow has it been interesting to see. Here are some of my observations:

1. Holy cow the nurses and techs are all nice and helpful. I’ve never had so much help transporting patients (circulator brings patient to OR??), placing IVs (I put in the cannula, nurse immediately takes over and connects like and dresses IV while I go back to airway), putting in monitors, or setting up room.

2. Working with attending surgeons (and sometimes high level fellows) is so nice. They’ve all been cool people and they’re fast and consistent.

3. The group is MD-only and seeing all the attendings doing their own cases is really nice. They’re very good at what they do (duh, but it’s cool to see attendings actually doing cases lol), they all have slightly different styles, and there’s no supervising nonsense (I have nothing against the CRNAs I work with at my main hospitals, they’re mostly all nice and pleasant to work with, but I don’t like the AANA or the tension between CRNAs and attendings at my home hospitals). It’s also nice how all the surgeons know the anesthesiologists and there’s a good respect across the drapes.

4. Holy fast turnover times. We’ve been doing so many cases a day. Setup takes like 2 minutes for the attendings and the room gets turned over in like 10-15 min. Take patient to pacu, close chart in pacu, see next one in preop, go set up quick, nurse brings patient back to OR. It’s so nice not having to just wait and waste time in between cases. I can see how it could get exhausting and there’s obviously less time for bathroom/breaks/food, but the rhythm is nice and I love the not waiting around.

Anyways those are just my thoughts from first week seeing private practice. Definitively is making me think about PP post-residency a lot more. Any other thoughts on people who have had similar experiences? What do you think of academics vs. PP?