See One, Do One, Teach One - Part 2

Today (Thurs) was our first full day in the OR and we are soaking up every last second of it! We are doing our best to learn the daily schedule and rotation of surgical staff as well as make good impressions to prove our abilities as PA students. 

Every morning the hospital has devotion in the dispensary at 7:15am. Devotion lasts until 8am and then the workers, patients, and families begin the day. Megan and I wandered over to the OR to check the board for the cases today and found that it was filling up fast with the scheduled surgeries and emergency cases. 

Dr Surge and Dr Boná (the bone doctor...) were on call surgeons today and Sidraka was the on call nurse anesthetist. He was one of our interpreters during the mobile clinics so we know him a little better than the others. Sidraka took Meg and I under his wing and was following the "see one, do one, teach one" motto. He showed us how to intubate and do epidurals and let us start new IVs on patients who needed it. After showing us the skill one time, he then let us do it and would be there to help if need be. He also went over a lot of the anesthesia meds with us so we would be more familiar with what occurs on the other side of the curtain. 

Today we had bilateral hernia repairs, 2 goiter removals, a femoral head fracture reduction with plate and screws, a hysterectomy, vaginal hematoma drainage, and a toe amputation (6th toe on a infant). We also had a little boy come in with a broken elbow and Dr Harison casted the little boy in the main area while surgeries were going on since there's no procedure room. 

My favorite surgery of the day was by far the c-section due to placental previa. The baby was 38 weeks and not ready to be born. The baby was head up and had to be flipped to be born breech position. The first c-section I was able to scrub in on but this time I wanted to be there to catch (yes literally catch) the baby and see what happens on the second half of things. The doctor pulled the baby out and tossed her into our cloth towel hammock. I was terrified I was going to drop the towel and the baby would fall!! But so far so good and we took baby out of the room to clean her up, warm her up, and do an unofficial APGAR score. 

The baby was shown to mom and then whisked away to the nursery area which is 2 doors down. We weighed and measured the baby before bundling her up in layers upon layers of clothes. We put on a cloth diaper and undershirt, another shirt, then a blanket, then a sweater and hat over the blanket and finally swaddled in 2 more giant blankets. The poor nugget at least doubled in size with all the clothing!! And then we placed the newborn baby in a crib in the nursery and left her all by herself.... no family or nurses nearby!