Specialist training in anesthesia around the world.

Anesthesia history has been marked by periods of nice developments and innovations followed by long periods of idleness. The interest in surgical anesthesia was in fact, a result of the painful surgical procedures being performed by merely restraining the patient by four or more body builder strong men. Perhaps the first anesthesia was a natural one; by severe cold which made surgeries less painful in wounded soldiers. Other developments followed in periodic succession. But pharmaceutical anesthesia brought with it the side effects too. So a concept of balanced anesthesia was born. The debate about general anesthesia and regional anesthesia is also an old one. The recent four to five decades revolutionized monitoring techniques and thus allowed complex cardiovascular and neuro-surgery possible USG has been a great mile stone. All this course has always put a burden on the anesthetist to keep himself abridged, if he has to be competent as well as safe healthcare professional. Different countries have different schedules of anesthesia training and this special invited paper by Dr. Romana Durrani offers a bird’s eye view of such training in a few countries. It is published as a guide for our young medical graduated, who might like to pursue their careers in one of these countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]