Learning the steps

"It's like dancing. You got to know the right moves," said our surgery block director during orientation. He was referring to scrubbing in on cases in the OR and navigating around the carefully orchestrated flow of nurses, physicians and OR staff. The movement of instruments, the position of drapes, the placement of surgeons--all part of this dance. The medical student has to learn his or her place.

I attempted to better learn these steps when I ventured into the OR today on my first case as a third year medical student. The case was a laparoscopic cholecystectomy, gallbladder removal to treat gallstones that were causing agonizing pain in our patient. Through small incisions on the abdomen, we placed ports that held different instruments and a camera that gave us a view of the abdominal cavity. I scrubbed in, held instruments, drove the camera and watched the monitors as the the instruments navigated through the biliary geography.

Once the gallbladder was removed, I made a longitudinal incision to slice open the gallbladder, which contained multiple green pigmented stones. It was impressive to see how the entire pouch was brimming with stones; each stone has the potential to block the ducts that carry bile to the colon and cause excruciating pain.
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Hard to believe that I have officially begun my eight week surgery rotation. During orientation, I also found out that one of my photographs from Med Link, a mentoring program that pairs medical students with underrepresented high school students, was selected as honorable mention for the 2009 School of Medicine Summer Photo Contest: "Learning Moments." Thought I'd share the photograph.


As days go by, I look forward to learning the steps to make it through the next eight weeks.