Mudgee, Day 2 - Theatre Day

So, everyday Tuesday is "Theatre Day" at the medical centre. What this involves is the doctors taking it in turns to use the day surgery room to perform various procedures, including draining cysts/abcesses, putting in and taking out Implanons, biopsies, doing skin grafts, etc; but of course, being in an Australia setting - and a rural one at that - most procedures involve excising suspected BCCs and SCCs (basal and squamous cell carcinomas). I spent practically the whole day in the theatre, and was obligingly accommodated for by all the doctors during their procedures. Most of them operated on the "see one, do one, teach one" principle; and so they demonstrated to me how a certain procedure was done before letting me have a go. Again, very confronting (I really don't like being thrown in the deep end!!) - but seriously, pure gold in terms of experience. I was very impressed with how despite there being only one room, the system was very efficient and practical - most procedures took only 15 minutes so quite a few cases were done throughout the day (and I wasn't fobbed off to stand in the corner for the entire day either).

Later on in the afternoon. Dr P and I went down to the hospital to check on a little bub born three days ago who wasn't sucking or feeding; had vomited the expressed breast milk that was given to him via an NGT; and was more or less sleeping like a sloth since birth (read: totally lethargic and somewhat unresponsive to the world around him). In brief, he was having a pretty rough start. We spent a good half hour or so setting up a drip to administer IV fluid therapy (the poor little poppet didn't even whince while he was being cannulated even though he was jabbed like a pin cushion before it was in). Then the doctor decided it would be best to transfer him to a big tertiary hospital in Dubbo or Sydney, so the rest of the evening was spent working out the logistics of that - calling different hospitals, organising an ambulance to drive mum and bub to Mudgee airport for the helicopter ride to the tert hospital, preparing bub for the flight, writing out discharge forms, etc. There was so much to get done, and so many people working at different ends to try to get this baby looked after - but really, the whole affair was pulled off quite smoothly and they made it out of Mudgee before I'd even left the hospital!

I guess what I learnt today is that some things have a quick fix solution; others don't. So, unlike the worlds of business and commerce, medical practice cannot always operate according to a cost-benefit system; where the greater your input, the better the outcome. And I don't know if it's just the emotional factors (being a tiny little munchkin and all), but I found myself thinking that the hours spent helping just that one patient had just as much value (if not more), than crunching (in production-line style) through a full day of consultations, caseloads and procedures