Anesthesia Acumen

Build clinical judgment for high-stakes anesthesia decisions from day one

Transitioning from textbook knowledge to real-time operating room decision-making challenges even the most prepared trainees. Anesthesia Acumen: A Guide to Clinical Excellence and Patient Safety provides the mental framework anesthesiology trainees need to think, reason, and communicate effectively during high-stakes clinical scenarios. Written by a dual board-certified anesthesiologist and intensivist, this book focuses on developing clinical intuition rather than memorizing protocols.

Anesthesia Acumen delivers structured mental models for common intraoperative crises including hypotension, hemorrhage, hypoxia, and airway compromise. Covering the complete perioperative continuum, this book offers practical communication scripts, organ system-based considerations, and guidance on avoiding cognitive pitfalls when balancing patient safety with efficiency.

Readers will also find:

• Crisis management frameworks offering simple mental models for rapid decision-making during hypotension, hemorrhage, and airway emergencies
• Communication strategies with practical scripts and approaches for effective interdisciplinary dialogue within the operating room team
• Clinical reasoning guidance to build intuition, recognize complications early, and avoid common cognitive traps during anesthesia care
• System-level thinking for addressing subspecialty considerations and integrating professionalism with technical expertise throughout training
• Structured approaches for prioritizing critical steps when facing multiple competing inputs during complex perioperative scenarios

Ideal for CA-1 and early CA-2 anesthesiology residents, senior medical students on anesthesia rotations, student registered nurse anesthetists, and anesthesia assistant students, this book provides the roadmap for navigating uncertainty, crises, and complex communication with clarity and confidence during the critical first years of training.

ALESSANDRO DE CAMILLI, MD, is an anesthesiologist and intensivist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center specializing in perioperative care for complex oncologic surgery and critically ill cancer patients. He holds dual board certification in Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine. His research focuses on perioperative implications of cancer therapies, thoracic anesthesia, blood conservation, and immunotherapy-related toxicities. Dr. De Camilli has published in Current Oncology, Trends in Anaesthesia and Critical Care, British Journal of Anaesthesia, and Cell.