Surgeries only operate two days out of the week in the public hospital in Cabrera; on Wednesdays they do cesareans and on Thursdays general surgeries. The reason they only operate general surgeries this frequently is because the surgeon commutes from Santo Domingo on Thursdays to perform the operations … about a three-hour commute.
When he arrived to see myself and three other students waiting to observe surgeries that day, he couldn't hide his curiosity … where we were from, where we were staying, why we were there, and what we were hoping to learn and to see. The head nurse introduced me as her nephew … almost immediately treating me as family since we first met.
Not only was the surgeon impressed that we understood and spoke Spanish well but that we were staying in a rural campo, living with host families. He was thrilled to have health students working to become physician assistants and a biomedical engineering student under his wing.
From the first incision with the scalpel to the final stitch closing the site, he walked us through each piece of the operation - a gall bladder removal. The operation got slightly more involved than usual, since, even after evacuating the bile from the gall bladder, some of the yellow, not-so-pleasant-smelling liquid leaked into the cavity and had to be cleaned up. We saw when and where the electric cauterizer was used, where hemostats needed to be applied, and the occasional cut made with tissue scissors. He used several different suturing techniques - one used for making a durable union of the abdominal wall and muscles, another to simply pull fat tissue together, and another to tightly seal the skin around the incision.
Two hours later, we left the operating room after a successful surgery. There is no doubt that I learned more in those two hours than I would in two hours of reading a book. My goal throughout my education is engaging myself in learning opportunities for practical experience, and this was definitely one of them.
When he arrived to see myself and three other students waiting to observe surgeries that day, he couldn't hide his curiosity … where we were from, where we were staying, why we were there, and what we were hoping to learn and to see. The head nurse introduced me as her nephew … almost immediately treating me as family since we first met.
Not only was the surgeon impressed that we understood and spoke Spanish well but that we were staying in a rural campo, living with host families. He was thrilled to have health students working to become physician assistants and a biomedical engineering student under his wing.
From the first incision with the scalpel to the final stitch closing the site, he walked us through each piece of the operation - a gall bladder removal. The operation got slightly more involved than usual, since, even after evacuating the bile from the gall bladder, some of the yellow, not-so-pleasant-smelling liquid leaked into the cavity and had to be cleaned up. We saw when and where the electric cauterizer was used, where hemostats needed to be applied, and the occasional cut made with tissue scissors. He used several different suturing techniques - one used for making a durable union of the abdominal wall and muscles, another to simply pull fat tissue together, and another to tightly seal the skin around the incision.
Two hours later, we left the operating room after a successful surgery. There is no doubt that I learned more in those two hours than I would in two hours of reading a book. My goal throughout my education is engaging myself in learning opportunities for practical experience, and this was definitely one of them.