I work in the Operating Theatre. AMA

[1AnotherOne]

I’m an Operating Department Practitioner working in the private sector.

I work the majority the time in a senior speciality role as a scrub practitioner or surgical first assistant.

Sometimes I work alongside the anaesthetist.

ask me anything!

In a private hospital do they blood available in case needed?

The smell of bone cement is horrendous

I liked it

Thank you for a great thread OP.

I recently had surgery (private hospital). It was quite major surgery and I was under for about 2 1/2 hours.
I explained beforehand that I sometimes get tearful under anaesthetic.

I came round whilst still in the theatre, I still had this blue tent thing around my head. I remember I waved at the anaesthetist and think I said I'm awake. He replied " it's ok we are just patching you up."

I didn't feel any pain but could hear a drill and the music playing and then I remember feeling really embarrassed as the move me onto a bed. My legs were wide open and I had no underwear on.
Next thing I remember is coming round in recovery.

I was a bit upset but ok, just wanted to get back on the ward to phone my family. They phoned the ward at 11.30 to ask someone to come and get me. They didn't come until 1.15 by which time the recovery team had phoned them 3 times.

By this point I was really crying and distressed. The nurses, surgeon and anaesthetist all kind of brushed me off and made me feel as if I was making a big deal about it.
When the surgeon came to see me I was sobbing and said that I had been traumatised and that I should not have been left in recovery so long. He just replied "oh well, you're here now."

I do have mental health issues, I would just like your opinion if I was overreacting and making a big deal about it ?

Lots of people get teary under anaesthetic, totally normal. Just sounds like the ward was busy.

@1AnotherOne how common is vomiting after surgery? I’m emetophobic and terrified of needing a GA one day. I had a minor op aged 9 and I was sick afterwards but hours later, why was that?

peri-op nausea/vomiting is multifactorial - it's not always to do with 'the GA'... some operations are more emetogenic than others. There are other risk factors for nausea/vomiting including a history of travel sickness, being a young female, being a non-smoker (!). Its pretty routine to give anti-emetics these days. Not all operations need a GA though - lots can be done with spinal/nerve blocks and those avoid any interference with the brain (although a spinal can cause nausea/vomiting by making blood pressure drop, its easy to fix with medications that bring BP back up).

I was incredibly sick after have just a nerve block, and not a spinal one, either, but one in my arm. Very strange. And it didn't really hit me until the next morning after the block and sedation had worn off. Is that still a response to the drugs, or to the trauma of surgery, or dehydration, or some unrelated factor?

Shouldn’t really be much anaesthetic wise to contribute to nausea with a block & sedation, especially if it didn’t start til the next day. Quite a few of the typical pain killers used post-op can cause nausea (as can uncontrolled pain). Could be operation related but that seems unlikely with an arm operation/ part of the hormonal stress response perhaps (but blocks tend to reduce that a bit)/ coincidence. Difficult to say…

thanks, maybe it was coincidence somehow then but I had a much better time on a previous one where it was GA and it makes me a little nervous to think about every having this type again!

Doesn't matter what surgery I have I wake up in absolute agony despite morphine I think it's a reaction to the anaesthetic because I'm crying with agony.

I had an elective procedure at a spire and I'm not going to lie the care and empathy I got was not very nice felt an inconvenience. NHS better
Had sepsis in April and the NHS were amazing
Currently on cancer pathway and likely to need surgery. Rather have on NHS

they wouldn't give me further morphine for the pain, because I'd had that sort of reaction to the surgery, which meant that I continued in pain after the first lot was used up. I don't have any problems with the morphine and had taken it for several further days without issue, but I guess there is a small chance it might contribute to complex regional pain syndrome. On the other hand, it meant after the first week, I had no decent pain relief and was in quite a lot of pain. I kind of wish I'd not told them about the reaction, especially as it might just have been coincidence, and they were that interested in it apart from no more pain relief.

As there is a recent study that has just come out claiming female surgeons have been sexually assaulted whilst operating in theatre, have you ever witnessed/experienced this?