Roy Cucchiara, M.D., former chair of the departments of anesthesiology at Mayo Clinic Rochester, Mayo Clinic Jacksonville and the University of Florida, editor of Miller’s Anesthesia, ABA oral board examiner, and prolific researcher has retired. Having worked with Dr. Cucchiara as a colleague for the last seven years of his career, we had the honor and privilege of sitting down with him to ask for some perspective on what he thinks about anesthesiology’s past, what he finds interesting about our present delivery of anesthesia care and what he thinks awaits us in the future.
Dr. Cucchiara had very humble beginnings, growing up in rural Louisiana. He worked on a farm during his youth, spending hours plowing fields behind a mule. It was during these labor-intensive days that he found himself convinced that, “If I don’t go to college, I will spend the rest of my life looking at the...
