Surgical Week Pt. 1

I have done my first week of senior project over the break, as it was easier to do then. I have been shadowing in the operating room at the hospital my grandfather — who is an anesthesiologist — works at, which is Stone County Medical Center. I will be talking about the first two days in this post and the rest tomorrow. I cannot go into detail about certain things, as what happens in the OR stays in the OR, as they say. I can talk about general surgery procedures and things of that nature, however. I was also able to get some pictures of things as long as the patient’s face wasn’t in them or any other information considered confidential.

The procedures I saw:

Day 1

• Removal of ingrown part of toenail
• Full hip replacement
• Fixing the rotator cuff by first using a scope to clean it up and then cutting/using sutures to fix
• Knee manipulation (no cutting, but fixing a stiff knee replacement under anesthetic by forcing the knee)

Day 2:

• Full reverse shoulder replacement (reverse = putting the ball and socket in opposite places in order to allow one to move their joint when the rotator cuff is not salvageable. The deltoid muscle can act as the rotator cuff when the joint is reversed)
• Treating of carpal tunnel
• Treating of carpal tunnel/fixing ulnar nerve
• Putting a pin in fractured hand
• Draining red abscess/removing excess skin

The hospital is dealing with coronavirus by testing everyone who enters the hospital for a fever and giving those who are clear a sticker to wear and only letting those with a sticker inside. Mine are shown below. A bit of blood got on the first one, which was most likely from the spraying of one of the incisions with a sterile liquid in order to rinse out the blood. There was also a meeting on Tuesday discussing coronavirus, mainly concerning patients having guests with them. which is in most cases stopped. They also discussed which type of mask they should wear for certain operations.

Pictures:

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Not sure why the pictures are upside down or sideways, as they are not like that in my library. The sticker pictures are the ones I got for not having a fever as stated above. The next one is of me observing on the left/bottom of the picture. The last picture is of me and my grandfather together. We have had a great time.