We integrate residents fully into the department from the start of training. As an intern, you participate in departmental academic meetings, grand rounds, and preanesthetic interview meetings while rotating off service. Residents participate in a structured didactic and simulation-based curriculum covering pain management and perioperative anesthesia.

During your Clinical Anesthesia Internship (CA-0) year, you spend:

• Two and a half months each on Internal Medicine and Surgical Services
• One month in the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit
• One month in the Surgical Intensive Care Unit
• One month in Emergency Medicine
• One month in Ear, Nose, And Throat Surgery
• One month in an Introduction to Anesthesiology course
• Four months in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine
• One month each in Acute Pain Management and Point of Care Ultrasound
• Two weeks each in the Preoperative Services Unit and the Post Anesthesia Care Unit

You also have four weeks of vacation throughout your intern year.

At this point in the program, you transition from generalist physician to specialist anesthesiologist. Our three-month intensive orientation starts with an eight-week preceptorship combining dedicated faculty mentoring, comprehensive didactics, and immersive simulator-based education. Daily morning lectures, workshops, and multiple simulator lab sessions each week reinforce core concepts and allow practice of crisis management skills in a safe environment.

Pre-Anesthesia Testing and Non-Operating Room Anesthesia Rotation

During this rotation, our residents spend two weeks in the preoperative assessment clinic preparing patients for major surgeries as part of a multidisciplinary team, including surgeons, anesthesiologists, and internists. You spend the other two weeks providing anesthesia for non-operating room procedures, such as endoscopy, bronchoscopy, cystoscopy, cardiac electrophysiology, and interventional radiology.

Neuroanesthesia Rotation

For two months, you are exposed to a wide range of neurosurgical and neuro-interventional procedures, including major spine surgery, craniotomies, functional neurosurgery (such as deep brain stimulator placement), aneurysm clippings, and neuroendovascular procedures.

Obstetric Anesthesia Rotation

During this rotation, our residents focus on developing foundational procedural skills, acquiring core principles of obstetric anesthesiology, and gaining proficiency in neuraxial anesthesia and perioperative management of the parturient. The Mount Sinai Hospital’s high-volume obstetric operating rooms provide exposure to a wide range of clinical scenarios.

Orthopedic and Regional Anesthesia Rotation

This rotation offers you the opportunity to see and provide anesthesia for all manner of orthopedic procedures, including work on hips, shoulders, knees, and toes. We have structured the regional anesthesia month to enable you to practice ultrasound-guided nerve blocks.

Pediatric Anesthesia Rotation

Residents develop proficiency in perioperative care of children of all ages and levels of acuity during the two-month rotation. You gain experience with high-volume, low-acuity ambulatory pediatrics rooms as well as managing critically ill patients arriving to the operating room from the pediatric or neonatal intensive care unit.

Cardiac Anesthesia Rotation

This busy rotation exposes you to an unmatched variety of cardiac surgical and interventional procedures. In the cardiac operating rooms, residents see on-pump and off-pump coronary artery bypass grafting procedures, valve repairs and replacements, aortic root procedures, ventricular assist device placements, total artificial hearts, and heart transplants, with a strong focus on intraoperative transesophageal echocardiography education.

Otolaryngology and Difficult Airway Management

These two rotations let you participate in both routine ear, nose, and throat cases as well as complex head and neck resections and reconstructions and invasive pulmonology. Many procedures require awake bronchoscopic intubation, and you learn to navigate the flexible bronchoscope. You gain experience using regional anesthesia for the head and neck, including infraorbital, supraorbital, supratrochlear, and sphenopalatine blocks for sinus and nasal surgeries, superficial cervical blocks for thyroid and neck dissections, and inferior alveolar and superior laryngeal nerve blocks for oral and airway procedures.

Elmhurst Trauma Rotation

Elmhurst Hospital Center is a Level 1 Trauma Center in Queens. Throughout this rotation, residents gain experience with trauma exposure and are on-call for trauma cases. During the day, you work in regular operating rooms on a variety of Elmhurst Hospital Center's cases, including adult and pediatric, with increased opportunities for independence.

Surgical Intensive Care Unit Rotation

Residents care for critically ill postoperative patients as part of a multidisciplinary team. In addition to planned admissions, such as liver transplantation patients, we receive a variety of unplanned admissions from most surgical services.

James J. Peters Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center Rotation

This rotation focuses on chronic pain in the outpatient setting. At the James J. Peters Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, you get hands-on experience performing fluoroscopically guided blocks for chronic pain.

The CA-2 year continues your subspecialty training with return rotations in several areas to build upon your CA-1 foundation. You will gain increasing independence and take on more complex cases and leadership responsibilities.

Liver Transplant Anesthesia

The Mount Sinai Hospital is a busy liver transplantation center, performing more than 170 transplants (adult and pediatric) annually. During this rotation, you participate in a special simulator curriculum and become proficient in major vascular access and perioperative transfusion medicine, as well as being introduced to intraoperative transesophageal echocardiography and viscoelastic testing.

Cardiothoracic Intensive Care Unit

This rotation builds on your experience in the intensive care unit (ICU) and with cardiac anesthesia. It exposes you to the postoperative management of patients who have undergone major cardiac surgery. You learn how to manage common postoperative changes and complications and gain exposure to intra-aortic balloon pump management, extra-corporeal membrane oxygenation, ventricular assist device, and artificial hearts.

In addition to the new rotations, CA-2 residents will return to the following rotations:

• Pre-Anesthesia Testing and Non-Operating Room Anesthesia
• Neuroanesthesia
• Obstetric Anesthesia
• Orthopedic and Regional Anesthesia
• Pediatric Anesthesia
• Cardiac Anesthesia
• Otolaryngology and Difficult Airway Management
• Elmhurst Trauma
• James J. Peters Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center

The CA-3 year is predominantly elective, allowing you to develop more independence, expand your skills, and pursue in-depth study in your areas of interest. You will serve in senior leadership roles on clinical services and have opportunities to customize your training based on your career goals.

Obstetric Anesthesia

As CA-3s, residents serve as the primary senior resident on the labor and delivery floor. In this leadership role, they assist attendings and fellows in managing the unit and take on an active role in mentoring and teaching junior residents.

Thoracic Anesthesia

This rotation allows you to gain proficiency in managing high-risk patients for a variety of video-assisted and open thoracic procedures, with a focus on the intricacies of one-lung ventilation and its attendant airway management concerns.

Post-Anesthesia Care Unit

During this rotation, you oversee patients recovering from surgery in our two main recovery areas. Some are healthy, ambulatory, and about to go home. Other patients are critically ill or have just undergone major surgery, and others are still waiting for an ICU bed.

Ultrasound

With the growing role of point-of-care ultrasound in the perioperative environment, we require a one-month perioperative ultrasound rotation to focus on transesophageal echocardiography, transthoracic echocardiography, regional, and point-of-care skills, such as lung ultrasound, Focused Assessment with Sonography for Trauma (FAST) exam, and gastric content evaluation.

Vascular Anesthesia

During this month, you learn the intricacies of caring for patients during high-risk major vascular procedures.

Additional Elective Opportunities

Additional elective opportunities are available for CA-3 residents, including:

• Rotations at our ambulatory surgery center and private offices
• Advanced regional anesthesia rotations at Mount Sinai West or Hospital for Special Surgery
• International health rotations
• Customized electives based on your career interests and goals

Our program offers a robust didactic program covering a variety of topics essential for an anesthesiologist in training. Each month is dedicated to a specific skill or field, including:

• CA-1 Bootcamp: An introductory lecture series that facilitates the transition from interns to anesthesiology residents.
• Ultrasound Focus: Faculty give scanning didactics followed by hands-on scanning practice sessions.
• Finance: Our didactics focus on essential topics, including financial planning, disability and life insurance, personal finance, and contract negotiations.
• Board Preparation: Our faculty give a series of high-yield review didactics to prepare our residents to excel in the annual Anesthesiology In-Training Examination.
• Advanced Topics: Didactics focus on high-yield anesthetic topics to expose residents to lectures from dual-trained ICU faculty, ambulatory anesthesiologists, obstetric anesthesiologists, and less commonly encountered anesthetics. 

In addition to our monthly didactic series, we hold weekly sessions focusing on:

• Grand Rounds: Rotating curriculum featuring moderated case presentations led by senior residents and attending physicians, morbidity and mortality conferences, and invited guest speakers.
• President's Journal Club: Led by David Reich, MD, Chief Clinical Officer, Mount Sinai Health System, President, The Mount Sinai Hospital, and former Chair, Department of Anesthesiology (from 2004-2014), residents discuss current articles of interest in the anesthesiology literature.
• Levine Rounds: Led by Adam Levine, MD, Program Director, residents discuss interesting cases and the clinical and basic science topics relevant to the case.
• Dedicated Teaching Days: Faculty spend their day out of the operating room to offer dedicated teaching sessions for residents.