To ask what its like being a surgeon/scrub nurse/anaesthetist?

[mumofoneAloneandwell]

Beginning Greys again to feel something

Is it as lifechanging as it seems, seeing inside someone, operating?

Are the theatre politics as crazy as they seem?

Do you get it on inside of elevators?!

Fun fact - if I had my time again, i'd be a heart surgeon. Unfortunately my head is too full of Gifs and Reality TV for that now 😅

Whats it like?

But it’s not just the patients who have arrested that the anaesthetists care for. Anyone who is very sick would probably have care by a team including an anaesthetist. They cover an incredible huge scope of work and do possibly the most difficult postgraduate exams in their training.

Are you an anaesthetist?

Everyone in the hospital should know how to start basic life support if they are physically able. There will more often than not be someone close by that is intermediate/advanced life support trained. There is not target response time to arrest calls - everyone gets there asap quickly as they can. It isn’t always possible for every member of the team to get there. Everyone intermediate/advanced life support trained should be able to support an airway initially & not everyone in cardiac arrest needs intubating or the more specialist airway techniques we use.
Arrest calls are not a big part of the job - certainly the aim with inpatients is to anticipate and prevent a deterioration before it happens & make appropriate decisions about resus on the occasions where it would be futile. They’ll be a more regular thing in the major trauma centres/big EDs.
Cant actually remember when last went to an actual arrest call…probably a few months ago (working in a medium sized DGH type hospital).

Thank you x

A fun question: is the hospital full of staff getting it on? 👀

ODP Operating department practitioner
Not medical myself but had many operations and family that are doctors. The ODPs have been brilliant. I almost always shiver and have some nausea and they have blankets, reassurance as well as the important medical knowledge and monitoring to know if there is a problem to stop you being sent back to the ward. (It was amazing an anti sickness drug called ondansetron went off label!)

Thanks for starting this thread OP, it’s interesting!

Nope, a different kind of doctor who works in close proximity to them. Eternally glad I don’t have to do their exams!!

Random Q - someone upthread quipped that in a crash call situation, no one's looking for an orthopaedic surgeon - but aren't some orthopaedic surgeons also trauma surgeons ? I thought "T&O" was its own specialism and always assumed they worked in acute/ urgent situations.

Is that not right?

I can't speak for general hospitals or surgical departments but I can confirm that at all the psychiatric hospitals I've worked at there were indeed staff "getting it on". I was frequently teased for not knowing the gossip that Nurse A who was married to Nurse B was having an affair with the social worker etc. There were a lot of married couples, and also lots of multi generation families working there as well, both nursing and ancillary/ domestic staff.

No there’s a team who attend arrest calls.

Oooo and was there hiding in store cupboards or rather madly on TV open offices just with the blind down?

Yes , they can operate on trauma patients, but the arrest / airway is managed by an anaesthetist. Each person in the crash team has a designated job eg airway, iv access , compressions, scribe etc. Hospitals have resuscitation departments in hours. Out of hours , usually the medical team , arrests run by a reg and attended by anaesthetist.

There was an unused ward that was popular, I believe, and lots of "popping to shops' to get cigarettes etc for patients and then 'getting stuck' in terrible traffic. Also weirdly a lot of staff lived on the adjacent housing estate so nipping home for lunch was very popular. I found it weirdly incestuous and it was a minefield for new staff or students who might make a casual remark in the break room about a colleague being harsh only to discover they were sitting next to said colleague's spouse or paramour or mother

I did a year of anaesthesia training many years ago before changing specialty. It was 80% routine tedium interspersed with 20% absolute arse clenching terror when things started to go wrong, and the patient did everything in their power to die on you. I couldn’t have managed 40 years of it and I take my hat off to anyone who does!

Orthopaedic surgeons will all be able to do basic life support and a lot will be ALS trained, even if they’re not 100% comfortable doing it because it’s not their every day. I certainly have had orthopods doing cpr in theatre and remember at least one very expertly getting things started when a patient arrested in the recovery room & he was the closest doctor. Their really important role in a trauma call though is to assess limb threatening injuries +/- help with stopping the bleeding. Roles in an arrest call aren’t always that fixed at all and it’s actually quite important that people retain a wide range of skills (if the anaesthetists are all in theatre who’d you think’s going to manage the airway on the wards then…the rest of the team need to until we work out plan b). We all tend to migrate to the bits that we’re most comfortable doing, but if I turn up to a call and the ED reg/consultant is managing the airway well & is keen to stay there then I’ll just do one of the other jobs that needs doing. Lots of people in medicine have had quite wide experience in other specialties before ending up in their final choice so the most appropriate person to do the job expertly in an emergency isn’t always the person you might think it is.

much of what happens in hospitals on the telly is not at all representative of the actual job.

Hello fellow ODP.

I’m a surgical first assistant. Assist for lots of specialities, can suture, inject local anaesthetic. I dabble in anaesthetic from time to time.

i also spent 5 years in a&e

It all just feels very normal for us so it’s important to remind myself that this is usually the scariest day our patients may ever have.

I love anaesthetists (though not in a snogging in the linen cupboard way). They’re so calm in an emergency. And their exams are evil.

Plastics. Orthopods generally get a bad reputation but they have nothing on the plastics guys.

It's never routine working in the NHS, particularly theatre and emergency calls. Sure some days are uneventful, which is a positive, but over 25 years I've seen many fascinating, funny, sad, horrific things and some memories will stay with me forever. I've also met many amazing people, both staff and patients.

As a med student and a junior doctor I hated going into theatre. The scrub nurses were absolutely terrifying. They'd bellow at you for being in the way, accuse you of not scrubbing properly and generally made you feel completely unwelcome. Definitely wasn't the environment for me.

Have you got one memory you can share?

I love that about plastics being arrogant 😄😄 thats not a surprise

Why ortho though?

What are brain surgeons like?!

Accuse you of not scrubbing properly!?!?!

Wow

I've been watching classic holby city

The anesthatist Zubin is very much like you describe - makes him attractive to me

So true

Its also so fascinating!

What does it feel like to suture? Are you suturing skin or organs?

I can imagine, the tv makes it seem chaotic all the time

Is a crash ever chaotic like it seems or is it quite calm due to everyone having an almost pre defined role?

I've had more plastic surgery operations than I can remember, and I've weirdly always found the consultants to be lovely. Also other types of surgery and some were very arrogant.
I was in hospital recently and the worse ones were the juniors (residents?) who completely ignored me when I tried to explain that actually I know my body and this is very very wrong.
I blame them for not noticing something that means I need more surgery, again plastics/maxfax and again, the consultants I've seen have been amazingly kind.