Expert: Ronald Levy, M.D. - 11/14/2006

Question
you said that in order to be an Anesthesiologist you need 4 years of residency training. What exactly is residency training? is that the same thing as an Internship to a hospital.

Answer
Internship is the first year of residency and is really a misnomer now. It used to be that you did an internship and then go out into practice (many, many years ago). Now all specialties require between 2 and 6 years so there really is no internship. Some specialties (like anesthesia) expect you to do a year of something else (medicine/surgery, etc) and then start anesthesia in your second year. I guess this is technically an internship.That being the case, you need one year of internship and 3 yers of anesthesia.

Ronald Levy, MD
Associate PRofessor of Anesthesiology
UTMB-Galveston