Women's Anesthesia Division

Patient Care Information

Over the years, the typical pregnant patient has changed from a healthy 22 year old to an older patient with complicated coexisting diseases. Our patient population has grown as well and we are quite a busy place. About 6 years ago, we moved to a beautiful new state-of-the-art Labor and Delivery Unit. L&D is a unique place in the hospital since we are a triage/emergency area, labor floor, OR and PACU all rolled into one. Here teamwork is essential and the anesthesia team plays an integral role in the day-to-day patient management and administration of the unit. We have been leaders in creating many of the policies on L&D, including Pitocin administration following vaginal delivery and c/section, Oral Intake Policy, VTE prophylaxis, management of PP hemorrhage and care of patients in the PACU to name a few.

We provide the gold standard for obstetric anesthesia care at Stony Brook with two attendings and two residents during the weekdays and a dedicated attending and resident on nights and weekends. We now have a second attending assigned during the weekdays to ensure that our elective cases get done in a timely fashion. This also allows us to have more time for resident education as we do not always need to have a resident in the OR doing cases. We make a big effort to nurture all of our residents and value their outside lives as well as their work lives. Personally, I take on the role of everybody’s mother, making sure everyone eats properly and gets enough rest and that they clean up after their mess. L&D provides a unique environment for our anesthesia residents to interact with patients and their families on a much larger scale than in the main OR. Here, almost all of our patients are awake and c/sections are the only surgical procedures where a significant other is allowed to come into the operating room and these “others” are sitting in our space and need to be watched carefully! Plus, sometimes, L&D can be quite the Soap Opera.

It is fair to say that our resident call room is one of the nicest in the hospital, complete with bedspread, a pet fish named MAC (Minimal Alveolar Concentration), a nice TV and DVD player (this was useful in the old days), weights and a resident painted blackboard wall. It has become a resident and attending hangout and it is quite common on any given day to have people wander in and out to eat their breakfast and lunch with us in their L&D home.

CA1 Residents are advised to make frequent reference to our OB Anesthesia Survival Guide.