Two visitors this week
A good week for visitors in theatre. Janak Mehta, a surgeon from Darwin, and Sarah Milington, a fourth-year medical student from Bond University, both joined us.
Teaching at both ends of a career
Having an established surgeon and a medical student in the same theatre on the same week is a reminder that teaching operates at very different levels. A visiting surgeon is interested in the detail of technique; a student is building the basic picture of what an operation actually looks like and how a theatre runs. Both are worth making time for.
Sharing knowledge with future medical professionals is a privilege.
What observing in theatre involves
A visitor in an operating theatre is there with the patient's knowledge and consent, and that is the first requirement rather than an afterthought. Beyond that, an observer either scrubs in or stays outside the sterile field depending on their role, follows the theatre's protocols on movement and on where to stand, and watches the operation on the arthroscopic monitor as well as directly.
For arthroscopic shoulder surgery the monitor is in fact the better vantage point. The operation is performed through small portals with a camera inside the joint, so what the surgeon sees is what appears on the screen, and an observer watching the screen is seeing the same thing rather than the back of a gown.
What a student takes from a day in theatre
A medical student in theatre is assembling a picture that lectures cannot supply: how a theatre list is organised, what the anaesthetist is doing and why, the sequence of an operation from positioning through to closure, and how the work is divided between surgeon, assistant, scrub nurse and anaesthetist. Anatomy also becomes a great deal more memorable once it has been seen in a living person rather than in a textbook. Students observe and take no part in treatment decisions, and individual results vary, with every patient assessed on their own circumstances.
Why surgeons in practice visit
A surgeon already in practice visits for different reasons: to see a particular technique performed, to compare how another unit approaches a problem they find difficult, or to watch an implant system in use before deciding whether to adopt it. A visit of a day or two is an inexpensive way of answering questions of that kind, and it is a long standing practice in orthopaedics for exactly that reason.
Related information
See also our post welcoming Dr Janak Mehta and our post on visiting medical student Yrto Lenssens, along with our shoulder fellowship page.