My notes…from the operating theatre

I guess first and foremost if I had to tell you one thing about the OR it would be don’t skip lunch if you can avoid it. Lets just say it get’s hot under the theatre lights and that it’s a lot easier to deal with if you’re well fed.

Having first really read about scrubbing (the cleaning of hands and arms and donning sterile gloves and gowns for surgery) from Sid Schwab over at surgeon’s blog having a working concept of the surgical field going in made things so much clearer. When I first started thinking about it I was a little nervous. Then when I was actually learning how to do it for the first time then I was excited. Eventually to me it was like extended careful hand washing.  I guess I felt in a similar way about what would happen after the scrubbing and went through a similar progression in how I felt about it.

When I was cutting sutures I was told by the Consultant(=Attending): “Cutting sutures is a thankless job, whatever you do you are bound to get it wrong either the ends will be too long or too short”. At the time mine were too long

Everyone who does laproscopic surgery will ask you what gas they insufflate it’s carbon dioxide and not air which has oxygen and would be flammable with cautery. Now you know I guess.

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