Surgery Shenanigans

As part of our rotation at Saint Mary's we get to spend two days in the operating room. This is awesome because Spectrum Health (The health care system that dominates the entire city of Grand Rapids) students aren't allowed to go into the operating room at all, so being at St. Mary's was a huge plus for us. For one of the days we are assigned to a specific operating room nurse. The nurse stays with one surgeon in one OR and we stay with them for the whole day and see all of the surgeries that they do. The other day we are assigned to a specific patient and we follow them from the pre-op area, into surgery and int the recovery after. This is a really great opportunity for us to not only see a couple different surgeries, but it is also a great way for us to see the many different roles that nurses have in the surgical process.

My first day was Wednesday and I was assigned to a nurse that I stayed with for the whole day. The operating room I was in was a neurological surgeon and he was doing three different lumbar (low back) surgeries during the time I was going to be in the room. I got to get changed into my sweet surgical attire, scrubs, mask, hair cover, etc, and then I got to find my nurse and start following her around. We went out to the Pre-op holding area and checked all of the paperwork and met the patient and the patient's family. After asking and answering some questions we brought the patient down to the OR. In the OR the anesthesiologist was waiting to put the patient to sleep, but I won't go into the mundane details of surgery. Basically, surgery was awesome. The surgeon, physician's assistant and surgical tech were all really great. Surgery is basically like a party. There is an IPod playing and everyone rocks out while they are doing surgery. It's epic. Everyone in the OR was really great and explained what they were doing and let me see what what was going on. They were also testing my knowledge of who sang all of the songs on the IPOD. AND I got to throw in my favorite Lady Gaga joke (How do you wake up Lady Gaga? Poke her face). It's funny, I know. I had SO much fun in surgery and I really did get to learn so much about the actual surgery as well as how the OR works and what the nurse does in the operating room. After Wednesday I was sold on possibly being a surgical nurse, but I wasn't really sure that I actually liked surgery or whether I just liked the fun, laid back atmosphere that there was in the room I was in on that one day.

Thursday was my follow through day where I was assigned to one patient for the whole day. I met my patient in the operating room and was with the pre-op nurse when she went in and talked with the patient and family. I also got to to meet the anesthesiologist and went with him to give some medications to the patient. I met the surgical nurse and then stuck with her when she met the patient and brought her down to surgery. She had an anterior cervical fusion with allograft and plating, which basically means they removed the disks between two of her vertebra on the front side of the neck. One they are removed they replace the disks with cadaver bone and then secure them with plating. This day in surgery was not fun at all. The surgeon was much older and not really friendly at all, I couldn't see anything, and none of the nurses were really super nice to me or willing to tell me much. The surgical tech was the only person who really was explaining what was going on. But basically I just sat on a stool for about three hours without seeing anything. And it was freezing. After surgery I went with the patient to the PACU (Post Anesthesia Care Unit). Patients go here to come out of the anesthetic before they go up to their room. PACU was kind of cool just because I had never seen it before, and watching people come out from the anesthesia is pretty funny.

Overall though, after the second day in surgery I realized that it wasn't really something that I loved. While I had fun with it, I think that I really just don't love surgery enough to want to do it. Also, one of my favorite things about nursing is the interaction that I get to have with patients and the relationships that I get to build. Obviously in surgery you don't really have any patient interaction, and I could never handle that. It was a great week and and amazing learning experience though!