Suturing a C-section patient!
Surgery is as cool as I imagined
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Suturing
The build-up: It was a regular Tuesday afternoon, I was just chilling in the doctor’s office and we hear about two emergency c-sections coming in.
The consultant tells us that we can scrub in. I scrub in for the first one and during the scrubbing procedure, the attending asks if I have ever done suturing on a real patient and I said no. I hear the words that would make every medical student nervous but excited at the same time.
“ I will let you suture the last 2 layers ”
My heart was beating out of my chest at this point.
I was super nervous but filled with excitement. 5 years of medical school, studying long hours and hard and it comes down to this. My first time scrubbing and suturing. It may sound dramatic, but to me, it was a moment that made this all “real”.
The process: Once in the OR, the resident was very helpful, guided me step by step. He sutured the main layers and gave me the last 2 layers, he showed me exactly how deep to go and what angle to go in and come out from. At this point i was expecting the consultant to leave, but she was the one cutting my sutures for me so yay for that extra added pressure. This was an experience I will never forget.
Other than the suturing, me and my partner got to do speculum exams, antenatal exams and I was lucky enough to get to put in a female catheter in! It was a week filled with good clinical experiences!
A paper I co-wrote got published!
I have been working on this paper since February with a few colleagues and it finally got published. It was hard, but it was very educational and it taught me a lot about the publishing process and how it is much more than just writing the paper and sending it. There are ALOT of factors that play a role, such as; which publisher, meeting their guidelines, getting permission to use each figure or table etc.
Here is the link to the paper: Prosthetic venous valves: Short history and advancements from 2012 to 2020.
Filling in for a nurse for one hour
The nurse that assists the consultant disappeared due to an emergency, so I had to fill in for her and boy oh boy oh boy… nurses really do not have it easy.
From filling out the paperwork for the doctor, preparing the equipment, cleaning the surfaces, filling the patients files details AND after doing all this - the doctor would ask me to perform the pap-smear test (because even though I am filling in for the nurse, I am still a med student and the doctor wants me to learn) - so after repeating this process for around 4-5 patients, I was tiredddd.
I am glad I got to experience this though because even though I already appreciated nurses and knew how hard they worked, this just made me live their life for an hour and see how it really is.
Song of the week:
I also stumbled upon a section on youtube where songs are slowed and reverbed. They sound so chilled and melancholic. Here is the same song but in the slow version. See if you like it - I definitely do.
Last weeks video: