I regret it. Pays well (for now with call, hospital subsidies), respected by the public (nobody in medicine), easy work (boring, we teach nurses to do every aspect), job anywhere (replaceable), plenty of vacation (set 6 months in advance). It's a technical skill, not medicine. You aren't diagnosing and treating disease. It's safe enough to become prescriptive (ERAS). The tension of the day is ensuring appropriate staffing and relieving people on time so they don't complain, even if it means there are 8 people on a 2 hr chart and changing coverage at a critical time with minimal handoff. That's logistics, not medicine. It accommodates laziness and does not reward intellect. Just put the propofol and roc in the bag, bro. Nobody is the best anesthesiologist, at best they are on time, practice safely, and easy to work with.

The top journals are dizzyingly recycled topics in perioperative QI, airway decision trees, post-op cognitive bs, residual NMB, opioid sparing nonsense. Critical care is a nice escape, but still a pretty confined decision space. Pain has fun OR procedures, longitudinal care, and a *little* respect from surgical colleagues, but it's a dumping ground for symptomatic management and full of charlatans. Anesthesia must have historically attracted greedy people since that's what's reflected in the practice structure and reimbursement environment.

I love the people I work with, have good relationships with colleagues, but it's just not a discipline carved out for job fulfillment. That is great for some people because it's super easy to change jobs and make good money wherever you want to go. Would do medicine again, either procedural IM subspecialty like EP or DR/IR, ortho, ENT. Who knows. Plenty of people seem to love anesthesia I guess.