#295 From OR To YouTube: What Happens When Patient Safety Meets Digital Storytelling

Curiosity can change a career—and a field. We sit down with pediatric cardiac anesthesiologist and creator Dr. Max Feinstein to trace how a love of ethics, a pandemic schedule, and a phone camera evolved into a mission to make anesthesia safer through clear, accessible education. From the first CA1 walk throughs to high-stakes cardiac cases, Max explains how video demystifies monitors, medications, and moments that raise anxiety for patients and challenge new clinicians.

We dig into the roots of patient safety—why medication errors still matter, how standardized setups and closed-loop communication reduce risk, and where pediatric data remains thin. Max shares the unexpected insights from filming veterinary anesthesia, revealing shared tools and parallel workflows across species. He also talks candidly about the hardest shoot: obtaining layered consent in the OR, balancing transparency with compassion, and earning trust from everyone in the room.

Now serving as the inaugural APSF digital editor, Max walks us through building collaborative patient-safety videos on platforms people actually use. Think opioid safety explained for patients, monitoring made visual for trainees, and practical lessons from human factors that stick when the pressure is high. Along the way, we highlight how partnerships with experts, attorneys, and working groups help turn guidelines into engaging stories that change behavior, not just views.

If you care about anesthesia patient safety, pediatric cardiac care, or how medical education is evolving on YouTube and beyond, this conversation offers tools you can use today. Subscribe, share with a colleague, and leave a review with the safety topic you want us to unpack next.

For show notes & transcript, visit our episode page at apsf.org: https://www.apsf.org/podcast/295-from-or-to-youtube-what-happens-when-patient-safety-meets-digital-storytelling/

© 2026, The Anesthesia Patient Safety Foundation

Transcript

Welcome And Series Setup

Max 0:00

Uh the the honest answer is that I I don't totally know where things will go with my YouTube channel, but any opportunities that I can find to focus on content outside of the operating room that are relevant to anesthesiologists, that's what I'd like to feature on my channel.

Meet Dr. Max Feinstein

Alli 0:21

Hello and welcome back to the Anesthesia Patient Safety Podcast. I'm your host, Ellie Bechtel. When I'm not podcasting about patient safety, I provide patient care as an anesthesiologist. We have a special interview series that we are kicking off today. Dr. Max Feinstein, a pediatric cardiac anesthesiologist and anesthesia YouTube channel host, joins me on the show to talk about patient safety, behind-the-scenes details about Max's popular anesthesia YouTube videos, education, and making the transition from training to practice in anesthesia. This is a two-part series that you don't want to miss. Before we dive further into the episode today, we'd like to recognize Medtronic, a major corporate supporter of APSF. Medtronic has generously provided unrestricted support to further our vision that no one shall be harmed by anesthesia care. Thank you, Medtronic. We wouldn't be able to do all that we do without you. Dr. Max Feinstein is a pediatric cardiac anesthesiologist at Columbia University in New York City. He also hosts an educational YouTube channel that focuses on sharing knowledge about the role of anesthesiologists in healthcare. In 2025, Max became the digital editor for the APSF, and we are so excited to have him join us on the show today. Hello, Max, and welcome. To help us get started today, can you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your anesthesia training, career, and your current role?

Max 2:03

Thank you very much, Allie, for having me on the show. And I guess at the beginning, my residency was in anesthesiology. I did at the Mount Sinai Hospital. After that, I went to Columbia University where I did a PEEDS anesthesia fellowship, followed by a PEETS Cardiac Anesthesia Fellowship. And currently I am on faculty at Columbia, where I'm a PEETS cardiac anesthesiologist.

Alli 2:26

And how did you become interested in pediatric cardiac anesthesia and to want to make that a focus for your practice?

Why Patient Safety Became Central

Max 2:34

I definitely would not have any idea 10 years ago that this is what I would end up doing. I initially had planned to go into infectious diseases when I was in medical school. I had gotten an ethics degree. So I had different ideas about what my career would become. But I think like many medical students, I found out what anesthesiologists do pretty late in medical school. And then once I fell in love with it and got to residency, I thought I would probably be doing critical care medicine because there's a nice tie-in with infectious diseases and my interest in internal medicine. But then I was very inspired by the Pete's anesthesiologist at Mount Sinai who made me think that I wanted to be like them. So I ended up doing the fellowship. And while I was in fellowship, I had been thinking about cardiac anesthesia for adults. And I, of course, didn't do that. But then when I was in fellowship and I was able to learn and participate in cardiac cases, I thought it was just the perfect marriage of my interests. And so I uh pursued additional training for that.

Alli 3:46

Since this is the Anesthesia Patient Safety podcast, we like to start the conversation off about patient safety. So, what got you interested in patient safety in your practice?

Max 3:57

So the furthest back that I can think that I was interested in a topic that really falls squarely within patient safety was when I was in medical school and I was thinking about infectious diseases and taking classes in bioethics. And I was trying to come up with some way to tie in the concept of ethics and medication errors and antibiotic resistance. And needless to say, I was not able to come up with a great way to marry all of those concepts. And then very shortly thereafter, I became interested in anesthesiology. And so when I was looking for a research project to do, I became really intrigued by looking at the data around medication errors. And at that point, one of the, this was almost a decade ago now, one of the articles that was commonly referenced stated that perhaps one out of every 38 administrations of a medication was in error in the adult anesthesia world. So that inspired me to start looking into what that figure looked like in pediatric anesthesia. And the short answer that I came away with is that there's probably not enough information to study that. So that was really the foundation of my interest in patient safety. And then I circled back years later when I started an educational YouTube channel. And a lot of the videos that I make are geared towards patients, and they're also geared towards early health professionals who are in training. So there are a lot of anesthesia-related safety concepts that just naturally feature themselves in the videos that I was making pertaining to really every aspect of anesthesia care, monitoring equipment, medications, postoperative care, and so forth. And so at this point, in my most recent iteration of thinking about patient safety, I really use my YouTube channel as a platform to try to amplify messages from organizations like the APSF and also from textbooks and studies about concepts that are most acceptable to patient safety.

Launching An Anesthesia YouTube Channel

Alli 6:11

Well, and some of our listeners may have seen you on your YouTube channel. And for those of you who haven't, there'll be information in the show notes so that you can check it out. But let's talk more about this side of your career. How did you first get started making these educational anesthesia videos? Because we just want to know more about your videos and your inspiration for these videos.

Max 6:33

Much like my interest in Pete's cardiac anesthesia, the idea of having a YouTube channel was never something that I would imagine previously. And it came about during COVID of all times because I was an intern and the schedule that I was assigned to was basically a week of work and then a week off. And this was intended to be a burnout reduction schedule, which was wonderful and I think very thoughtful by my residency program. And the end result of that was that I had a ton of free time in the middle of New York City, in the middle of COVID. So there was nothing going on. And I started watching everything that I could on Netflix and that I've never really spent a lot of time watching videos on YouTube. And it struck me that there wasn't a lot of information about anesthesiology, and I was just getting ready to start my CA1 year. So I thought, gee, this might be an interesting juncture to start making videos about what the training process is like for anesthesiologists, because I'm at the beginning of it. I've got all this time. And so I approached my program director, Adam Levine, and asked him what he thought about me hopping into an empty operating room and talking about foundational concepts in anesthesiology as I'm learning them and going through the early part of my residency. He was very enthusiastic to have me do that. So I had no background at all in video recording or editing. So I just sat down with my phone and started making some videos. And after some time, it got some traction. And I got some really nice feedback from medical students who found that the videos were helpful for them to get a little bit more exposure to anesthesiology. And also some feedback from patients who found that they were getting information about anesthetic care that they were having trouble finding in other places and also getting a visual representation of what they might expect for an upcoming surgery or procedure that they were having. And so, with that feedback as motivation, and also my program director continuing to not only be enthusiastic about me making these videos, but also encouraging me to go into an operating room and open up equipment and use it for educational purposes. It was the right combination of ingredients to help me just stay excited about making videos. And that started six years ago, just about. So it's been a fun ride and I'm excited to continue working on them.

Audience Impact And Early Wins

Alli 9:14

Oh, that's so cool. And it's so interesting that your videos appealed to a diverse audience from patients themselves all the way to medical students and people in anesthesia training and anesthesiologists. What's your favorite video?

Max 9:30

The video that I had the most fun making and that I go back and watch sometimes is actually not related to humans at all. It is a vet anesthesiology video that I had spent a long time trying to coordinate and finally found a veterinary anesthesiologist who let me come into her practice and interview her, film the procedure that was going on, which was the dog being spayed. And it was a remarkable experience for me to see how many similarities there are and also how many differences there are. So I have two dogs, and I've always at a baseline just appreciated veterinarians. But having the opportunity to talk with one and gain the perspective on what it's like to care for animals, not just of all different ages, but of different species, was mind-blowing for me because it's just so far beyond the scope of what we do. I'm so limited in what I'm able to do in terms of my provision of care. But vets seem like they can just do it all. So it was really fascinating and seeing the use of the same ventilator, for example, that I use. I don't know what I had imagined, but it was a wonderful experience. So that was my favorite video by far.

Alli 10:51

Oh, nice. All right. So everyone, we have to go check out that video. What video was the hardest one to make?

Favorite Vet Anesthesia Video

Max 10:57

The hardest video to make was probably one that I made where I got into the operating room with a patient on the table. And the the reason that that was the hardest was just from a permission standpoint. Not only did I need to make sure that I had all the appropriate permissions in place in terms of, you know, having a conversation with the patient and consenting them for video being filmed and put on YouTube, but also making sure that I was doing that in a way that didn't contribute to any anxiety that that patient had around their surgery. As I mentioned, I have had an interest in cardiac anesthesia. And so I thought that it would be interesting for me, but then also educational to film a video about cardiac procedure. But of course, that is very scary for patients to undergo. So to circle back to your question, I think the hardest aspect about that was finding the right opportunity and the right patient to be involved with that video. And then secondary to that was making sure that there was consent from everyone else in the operating room, you know, the surgeons, the scrub tech, everyone who's there, so that there is comfort all around with having a video camera in the operating room.

Hardest OR Video And Consent

Alli 12:16

I can see how that video would provide such a great source of information for patients who might need to undergo that procedure themselves or for anesthesia professionals too. So probably worth all the hard work in the end.

Max 12:29

I think so. And your intuition is spot on with the statistics that I'm looking at. It's one of the most viewed videos that I have.

Alli 12:38

So, what can we hope to see going forward on your YouTube channel?

Max 12:43

I have started to take things a little bit more into a subspecialty direction, just by virtue of the fact that day in and day out I'm working with a pediatric population. So my videos are already starting to trend more towards pediatric anesthesia focused. Having said that, there are opportunities that I have now with the Anesthesia Patient Safety Foundation to work with people of all different backgrounds, including attorneys. And the honest answer is that I I don't totally know where things will go with my YouTube channel, but any opportunities that I can find to focus on content outside of the operating room that are relevant to anesthesiologists, that's what I'd like to feature on my channel.

Alli 13:32

Nice. Well, we are very much looking forward to it. And speaking of the APSF, so you are one of the APSF social media ambassadors and just last year became the APSF digital editor. So we want to hear a little bit more about how you became involved with the APSF and your role as the digital editor.

Future Direction Of The Channel

Max 13:53

I will tell you a little bit of a funny story about how I became involved with it. So I had made a video about how it is it that anesthesia professionals ensure that patients are not aware of anything when they're not supposed to be aware of anything. So in that video, I had included a process CEG device, the BIS monitor. And so, you know, I put it on my forehead, and I was talking about it in the video. A year or so later, I had heard from someone from Medtronic who makes the BIS device and ended up doing some consulting work with them. And they connected me with Patty Riley, who's a nurse anesthetist who's been involved for a very long time with the APSF, and she basically took me into the fold. I have to admit that I at that point had not heard of the APSF. And so I asked my program director, I said, hey, I've got this opportunity to do some work with them. Can you tell me a little bit about this organization? And he told me the APSF is a remarkably influential organization. They standardized monitoring. They were the organization that initiated the concept of patient safety that all of healthcare was modeled after. And so it was a no-brainer for me to pursue any sort of collaborative work that I could do with the APSF. And so that was at this point almost four years ago.

Joining And Growing With APSF

Alli 15:14

Oh, that's great. You just started as the digital editor. Why did that job appeal to you? And how is it going so far?

Max 15:23

So I am very fortunate to have gotten this position as the APSS digital media editor this year. It's actually the inaugural year for it. And the concept with the position is to generate content related to patient safety, of course, that is disseminated through all of the digital media platforms that the APSS has. So YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and so forth. And the way that the content is created is with the working groups within the APSF. And so this is an opportunity for me to collaborate with people who have a wide range of expertise to put together videos that are ultimately most relevant for patient safety. The way that I initially got involved with the APSF was by becoming a social media ambassador. So this is a really wonderful opportunity for any anesthesia professionals who are on social media and would like to help be involved with and promote the messages of the APSF.

Alli 16:32

Excellent. What was your first video for us? And tell us a little bit about what it was like making an APSF video compared to one of your solo videos.

Making Collaborative Safety Videos

Max 16:43

The first video that I made with the APSF was a video for patients about how opioids are administered and how specifically they're administered in a safe manner under the care of anesthesia professionals. And obviously, it's a very important topic. And the process for making this video was dramatically different from how I make videos for my own channel. And that's largely because of the number of collaborators who are involved with this. So one of the great strengths of the APSF is just the sheer number of experts who are involved with putting together the material and being the thought leaders behind everything the APSF does. So when I started working on this video, in fact, the script had already been partially written by a group of experts who are working with the APSF. And so we took a look at the script together and all came up with some ideas for how we might tailor it to a format that is in line with how I typically make videos, which would be a talking head style. So I sit down in front of a camera and I'm explaining a concept. And the challenge, of course, is how to make that seem like an engaging type of video. And a large part of that simply has to do with making sure that the content is relevant to the viewer. So I was working with a group of five or six people, and the biggest challenge in doing this was just the process of collaborating and going back and forth, hashing out different ideas. There were some concepts that took a little bit of time for us to agree upon the best way to present them. And of course, just the amount of everyone's time that goes into a collaborative process like that is very different from when I sit down, I'm by myself, and I write a script and there's no one looking over my shoulder for better or for worse. And then I, once I'm happy with it, then I sign off on it. But for me personally, making these videos with the APSF has been an incredibly informative process and a real pleasure to be able to work with a number of people who are experts in the wide variety of topics that we're covering with the videos.

Where To Watch And What’s Next

Closing And Calls To Action

Alli 19:03

And it's such a different way to display the information and for people who need that information to be able to consume it in that video format rather than reading an article that might not be in an accessible language or even going to a website. And it's nice that now we have this video format, and patients and anesthesia professionals can view it and take in that information in just a little bit different way, but I think that probably speaks to them really well too. And I'll include the information and the link to the video in the show notes so everyone can check it out. Thank you so much for joining us on the show today. We hope that you will mark your calendars for part two of this interview series next week. We are continuing the conversation with Max to talk about challenges in anesthesia education, patient safety education, and making the transition from training to practice while providing safe anesthesia care. If you have any questions or comments from today's show, please email us at podcast at apf.org. Please keep in mind that the information in this show is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical or legal advice. We hope that you will visit apf.org for detailed information and check out the show notes for links to all the topics we discussed today. Thank you for tuning in. If you found this episode valuable, please share it with your colleagues, friends, or anyone interested in improving anesthesia patient care and safety. Your support helps us reach more listeners and spread awareness about the importance of safety in anesthesia. We're excited to share that the podcast is available on Spotify and YouTube so it's easier than ever to listen and share. If you are on Spotify, make sure you click the bell icon to subscribe so you don't miss an episode. Until next time, stay vigilant so that no one shall be harmed by anesthesia care.