Anesthesia

Committed to Excellence in Anesthesia

The Department of Anesthesiology provided more than 43,000 anesthetics in 2 hospitals last year. In addition to providing anesthesia care for surgeries performed at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center (WFUBMC), the department provides all anesthetic coverage for the obstetric suite plus gynecological surgery at Forsyth Memorial Hospital.

The department also provides triage, direct patient management, and consultations in both the adult and pediatric intensive care units at WFUBMC. We employ a cadre of critical care medicine specialists cross-trained in several areas.

We medically direct the Preoperative Assessment Clinic (PAC). The PAC helps ensure that outpatient surgical patients and same-day surgery patients have proper management of other medical conditions prior to their surgical experience.

Two anesthesiologists on faculty always take in-house call (one at Forsyth Memorial Hospital and one at WFUBMC) while 4 other physicians take call from home. Anesthesiologist faculty responsible for Acute Pain Management, Adult Critical Care, Pediatric Anesthesia, and Cardiothoracic Anesthesiology each provide one specialist on-call 24 hours per day from home. These physicians come to the hospital when needed, and a cardiac anesthesiologist comes in whenever a cardiothoracic case is performed. Pediatric Critical Care also has a faculty member of our department in the hospital 24/7 for supervision of care of children in the pediatric ICU.