Facility Oakland Medical Center Department of Anesthesiology Address 280 W. Macarthur Blvd Oakland CA 94611 Map & Directions Telephone Appt/Advice: (510) 752-6238

Specialty: Labor & Delivery

Welcome to my home page!

PERSONAL BACKGROUND
I started with Kaiser in January 2005, so I’m one of the newest members of the department of anesthesia. For the past 14 years, I practiced obstetrical anesthesia at a busy private hospital nearby. I learned about the Kaiser anesthesia service when the Oakland Hospital outsourced the obstetrical practice to that same private hospital. I was immediately impressed by the quality of people at Kaiser. There is an impressive focus on quality of care and a genuine team spirit. When the delivery of obstetrical care returned to Oakland, I jumped at the opportunity to become the director of obstetrical anesthesia at the Kaiser Oakland Medical Center.

I came to obstetric anesthesia by a circuitous path. I lived outside of the United States much of my early life; I started school in Brazil, and lived in Europe, Central America and Asia. My family was given the opportunity to meet people from diverse cultures. I had the opportunity to make friends with people with a markedly different life experience than most Americans. We moved to California when I was about to start college. With a lifelong love of music, I worked in the music world of Los Angeles of the 1970s. Although performing was fun, it wasn't a career; when my father's persistent advice finally got through my thick skull, I concentrated on school. After graduating with honors, I went on to earn both a medical degree and a doctorate in research concentrating on DNA chemistry and related drug interactions. Anesthesiology was appealing, as much of anesthesia is in fact applied pharmacology, so I entered residency training. By the end of my first year of residency, I knew that obstetric anesthesia offered the intellectual challenge and patient care opportunities that I enjoyed; I completed the obstetric anesthesia clinical track at UCLA and Cedars Sinai.

OBSTETRIC ANESTHESIA
Obstetric anesthesia is the care of a pregnant patient through labor and delivery. Frequently the job involves meeting a woman laboring in pain and safely bring her comfort while always maintaining the safety of her baby. On occasion, our job involves very challenging situations where we care for a sick mother or fetus, including emergency surgery. Care in childbirth involves coordination with obstetricians, nurses, laboratory technicians, obstetric technicians, clerical staff and a host of other professionals whose contributions are essential but often unappreciated.

WHY PRACTICE OBSTETRIC ANESTHESIA?
I have the greatest job in the hospital! I get to work with people I admire. The obstetricians at Kaiser Oakland are skilled physicians and the Obstetric residents enthusiastic and smart. I work with wonderful nurses. The labor and delivery nurses at Kaiser are supremely skilled, gentle and compassionate, yet passionate advocates for the laboring woman. The anesthetist’s role in the relief of pain offers tremendous rewards; there are few activities in life more fullfilling than relieving another person's pain. We also help a laboring woman through what at times are very frightening, difficult situations as her child is born. Finally, I share in the arrival of a new person into our world and vicariously share the joy of a mother and father meeting their child for the very first time. Labor and Delivery is the best place in the hospital.

PATIENT INFORMATION
If you are interested in learning more about obstetrical anesthesia, visit either of the the web sites of the American Society of Anesthesiologists or the Society of Obstetrical Anesthesia and Perinatology.

HISTORIC PERSPECTIVE
As H.W. Haggard wrote in 1929, “The position of woman in any civilization is an index of the advancement of that civilization; the position of woman is gauged best by the care given her at the birth of her child." The first step by modern medicine towards the relief of pain during childbirth occurred when the father of obstetrical anesthesia, a Scottish physician named James Young Simpson, administered Ether to a laboring woman on January 19, 1847. An excellent discussion of the scientific, sociological, religious and historic facets of obstetric anesthesia can be found in Donald Caton's, "What a Blessing She Had Chloroform: The Medical and Social Response to the Pain of Childbirth from 1800 to the Present", Yale University Press, 1999. The book's title was spoken in 1859 by England’s Queen Victoria as her own daughter gave birth. Although Victoria had received anesthesia for some of her deliveries, Victoria’s praise of anesthesia assisted initial public acceptance. The rejection of obstetric anesthesia on religious grounds as well as the present trends to avoid medications in natural childbirth are discussed with insight.

MY PLEDGE
As the director of an already fine obstetrical anesthesia service, and as an individual physician caring for laboring patients, I will do my best to provide skilled, safe, compassionate care for laboring mothers and their babies.

Dedication plaque at statue of Sir James Young Simpson, Edinburgh Castle, Edinburgh, Scotland.

Not just a purveyor of obstetric anesthesia services, my family

Membership:
California Society of Anesthesiologists
American Society of Anesthesiologists
Society of Obstetrical Anesthesia and Perinatology

Specialty: Labor & Delivery
Baccalaureate: University of California, Los Angeles
Doctor of Philosophy: University of California, Irvine

My Credentials

Medical school	UC Irvine School of Medicine, Irvine, CA
Internship	UC Irvine Medical Center, Orange, CA
Residency	UC Los Angeles, School of Medicine, Los Angeles, CA
Board certification	Anesthesiology, American Board of Anesthesiology

Disclaimer
If you think you have a MEDICAL OR PSYCHIATRIC EMERGENCY, CALL 911 IMMEDIATELY or go to the nearest hospital. DO NOT attempt to access emergency care through this web site. An emergency medical condition is a medical or psychiatric condition that manifests itself by acute symptoms of sufficient severity (including severe pain) such that you could reasonably expect the absence of immediate medical attention to result in any of the following: serious jeopardy to your health, serious impairment to your bodily functions, or serious dysfunction of any bodily organ or part. An emergency medical condition is also "active labor," which means a labor when there is inadequate time for safe transfer to a Plan hospital (or designated hospital) before delivery or if a transfer poses a threat to the health of the member or unborn child.

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