Welcome to the Regional Anesthesia Program at the University of Florida’s Department of Anesthesiology!

The Division of Acute Pain Medicine and Regional Anesthesia is currently under the direction of Andre P. Boezaart, MD PhD. We are a team of attendings, fellows, residents and nurses dedicated to treating patients suffering from acute pain.

The Division offers a competitive, comprehensive 12-month fellowship in acute pain medicine and regional anesthesia. This fellowship loosely adheres to the American Society of Regional Anesthesia’s guidelines for fellowship training. As such fellowships are not ACGME-accredited, we freely adapt these guidelines to suit the specific individual needs of the fellow and the institution.  We have 4 fellowship positions.  Fellows are required to be licensed in the state of Florida and work as faculty one day a week.  That puts us in a position to offer fellows a better salary and other faculty benefits.  We also provide fellows with non-clinical academic time to produce research and teaching output.  The ultimate goal of the fellowship program is to produce complete Acute Pain Specialists – Consultants in Acute Pain Medicine.

Our division trains anesthesiology residents at the University of Florida at each year of their residency. Resident educational objectives correlate to the residents year of training, allowing a continued and expanding role for residents of all levels.  During the CA1 year residents receive and introduction to APM & RA and the main emphasis is on Anatomy.  After the CA2 year a resident should be very comfortable in all blocks everyday anesthesiologists would be required to do, while after their CA3 year elective rotation residents should be very comfortable with advanced blocks and how to care for patients with these blocks, especially all continuous neuraxial, paraneuraxial and peripheral nerve blocks.

The division is also involved in multiple research projects involving home-based management of perineural catheters, compartment syndrome, early detection of nerve block onset, unique educational tools and the development of new devices and methods to enhance the safety of regional anesthesia.   Through the Office of Technology and Licencing fellows are encouraged to develop and patent commercial products for use in APM & RA.  The idea is for them to share in the future profits of such products.

As part of our commitment to patient care, education and research, we have developed the Gator Regional Anesthesia Program. This blog is used to facilitate national and international discussion on regional anesthesia and acute pain medicine. Using the latest in Web 2.0 technologies, this blog will itself serve as a test bed for evolving medical education technologies.

Block Statistics
Numbers below reflect only those nerve blocks done at Shands at the University of Florida. Blocks performed at the Florida Surgical Center (FSC) , Alachua General Hospital (AGH), or for consult are not included. FSC only caters foir ambulatory surgery and ans approximately 100 block, of which approximately 10 – 15% are continuous blocks are done here per month.  At AGH we do mainly joint replacement surgery and thoracic surgery.  This is an inpatient facility wher approximately 100 blocks are done per month, of which 99% are continuous nerve blocks.  Patients scheduled for major upper limb surgery at both FSC and AGH are on our home care (ambulatory) continuous nerve block program.  This includes shoulder and elbow arthroplasty.  We expect to do approximately 6,000 blocks at all three facilities (SUF, AGH and FSC) during 2009.

2005 Blocks performed: 1443
2006 Blocks performed: 1476
2007 Blocks performed: 1843
2008 Blocks performed: 2686