Practicum ~ Week 6 ~ Surgical suite part 2

This week I had Jeff and he is such a cool guy. He is quiet at first but he likes to make people feel comfortable when you are in there with him, which is nice. The first night I learned that they pick the first two cases for the next day for all the elective surgeries. Then for the night we just add on cases that are emergency cases. Then we finish anything that is left in decontamination, we put neptunes onto the cleaner for a 50 minute cycle to make sure that they are clean. That is pretty much all you do at nights on surgical suite and order the supplies that are needed in the room by sending a order to storz. 

But last night was hectic. In Lethbridge there is a water crisis, where there is a boiling water order sent out to everyone in the city. This caused a major issue in the OR since if we do not have a clean water supply we cannot carry out with decontamination services downstairs or even autoclave since it just uses tap water to carry out the steam process. At 6 pm, they were ordered to shut off the autoclaves and the washers downstairs and that we had to send out our dirty stuff to Taber since they were still able to carry out processes. But the drs. talked about how if patients crashed that they would not have the proper supply in order to help them without having things that are cleaned and sterilized so they cancelled ALL elective surgeries for both Thursday and Friday. We had to put away the first two cases for tomorrow morning and send them back downstairs and now they only can add cases that are life and death or c sections. I also got to see the removal of an appendix and its amazing how tiny they are.

Last day - This day was pretty much the same as the others. The boil water cease ended and surgeries were resumed. I got to see a fixation of an ankle fracture that night and I got to meet Dr. Anderson and he and his nurses explained the procedure for me about what is going on. I also had to wear a lead since they take pictures throughout the whole procedure of the ankle to make sure that it is in place and that the screws are deep enough etc.