Since its establishment at 80s, Far Eastern Memorial Hospital has continuously provided excellent health care for people of TaipeiCounty based on the ideal of Far Eastern group’s late founder, Y. Z. Hsu.During the past 27 years, from 20th to 21st century, the Department of Anesthesiology, along with the hospital, has large progress both in equipment and caring quality after serial revolution coping with new advancement of medicine and health care system change.

The unstopped introduction of new anesthetic drugs, techniques, concepts and apparatus makes new challenges to our department. On the other hand, our behind-the-screen work results in people’s lack of knowledge or misunderstanding of our doing. Actually, the induction and emergence of anesthesia are quite similar to the take-off and landing of airplanes, which is the most crucial part of the whole flight. If any turbulence encountered, like any sudden events during surgery, there must be someone taking care of it since the surgeon is concentrating on the procedure. The one responsible for this is your anesthesiologist. New advances in the knowledge of physiologic change during surgery and new invented monitoring device allow us to anticipate and prepare for various adverse events, thus reducing possible hazards.

To date, there are 11 doctors in our department, besides of anesthesia for common surgery, individually specializing in cardiac anesthesia, pediatric anesthesia, geriatric anesthesia, obstetric anesthesia, and pain management. Now we have pain clinic to provide evaluation and treatment of pain-related problems. There is also anesthesia evaluation clinic to evaluate the anesthesia risk, make anesthesia plan, explain and answer anesthesia questions. Some of our staffs are also devoted to basic research to promote new progress of medical care, hoping to find out safer and more effective anesthetic methods or techniques. Others also take part in establishing new education programs for young doctors, making them more well-prepared in the first few years of their careers. We also continuously introduce new anesthesia technique to cope with our hospital’s policy of developing minimally invasive surgery.

In the first decade of 21st century, we encounter great challenges from climate changes, new diseases that have never be seen before, fluctuations in economical situations etc. Medical systems, as a part of the society, also face these challenges. We will take it as our responsibilities to overcome them and provide better and best care for our people.