Blog 3

My favorite overall experience was going to the operating room at the hospital!  I really had an awesome time while watching surgery.  I was shocked at how similar their OR was to Sarasota Memorials OR.  It was definitely not as big, but they still had much of the same equipment.  I was very fortunate to have two resident students in operating room number 5 who spoke English.  When we first walked through the doors to head to the operating room, it was not long until we were whisked away to change our clothes into some much larger green scrubs.  We were also given a surgical cap and some blue booties to put over our shoes.  After we were changed into our sterile uniform, we were shown a tour of the whole operating room.  They had a total of 6 very nice operating rooms, additional rooms where they sterilized all their equipment, and other rooms to store all the sterilized materials.  They even had the very big sinks next to the rooms with the soap and water that you did not have to use your hands to turn on.  After the tour, I went into operating room 5.  I walked into the doctor collecting an incisional biopsy of a retro peritoneal mass.  It was very interesting to watch and because of where the mass was I thought it was so neat to actually see her intestines out of her body.  The next surgery was my absolute favorite to watch!  It was a laparoscopic cholecystectomy, which is the removal of the gall bladder.  They made one small incision in her abdomen and filled it with air so everything was very visible.  After they filled her abdomen with air they made three additional holes.  The doctor with the help from the resident students then used one of the incisions for the camera and then the other three to help cut and remove the gallbladder.  With it being on camera we were able to watch the whole surgery on a TV screen.  When they first started to look with the camera they looked all around the abdomen and at one point I had this epiphany of “there is the liver.”  I thought it was crazy how identical it was to what we see in our books.  He lifted the liver up and I then could see the gall bladder.  It was unbelievable how he was able to maneuver around with these long pincher like tools to get to the gall bladder.  He used a few different tools to cut out the gall bladder, and before anything was removed he first had to drain it.  Then he started cutting off the gall bladder until it was ready to be removed.  I was thinking at the time how it was never going to fit through the small incision because of how big it looked on the screen, however, I was absolutely shocked to see how small it was when he took it out.  After it was removed they washed and suctioned out the remaining bile, they closed up the incisions, and the patient was done with her surgery.  The last surgery I was only able to see a little bit of and it was a hernia repair.  This, like the other two, was also very interesting to watch.  Being able to talk to the resident doctors in English was extremely helpful; he answered all our questions and even showed us how they write orders for patients after surgery.  I really enjoyed the operating room as a whole, and have really learned a lot from this experience!!  I cannot wait to see what the rest of my trip has in store for me.