Theatre Practice

My theatre practice session was yesterday afternoon, and I had a brilliant time. So many things made it great - small group size, interesting content, practical content we will use at EMS, and fun instructors.

There was a little confusion about scrubs and exactly how much clothing could be worn. I think we may have embarrassed our poor nurse asking what could and couldn't be worn. In the end we decided on underwear only! At least the changing room wasn't too cold. We were given a quick tour of the surgical ward, then split up. My group headed off to hand washing first.

For the first scrub of the day it should take 6-9 minutes to wash your hands. We were following the counting technique - 30 scrubs on the front and back of the hands and 20 on each side of the fingers, not forgetting the webbing. I found the most difficult parts were remembering to use the elbow to pump the hibiscrub and washing afterwards. My elbows didn't want to point downwards so soap was just sticking to my arm.

We were then shown the proper way to gown up and put on surgical gloves. I didn't have a problem with this and found it surprisingly easy considering I hadn't done it before. The rest of the group and the nurse were sure I'd been practising before or something.

The second section was naming instruments, and there were a lot of them. The regular stuff like Mayo scissors and haemostats were fairly easy to remember, but the various types of retractors threw me for a bit.

I only hope the rest of the practicals are as much fun. I fear the diagnostic imaging computer practical on the physics of imaging may be less thrilling.