Come! Walk along with me as I tell you a true story. This one happened during my second year of teaching a program called Surgical Technology at the community college in Hickory, N.C.
I began teaching in late 1979 and graduated my first class of operating room technicians (as they were called at that time) in the summer of 1980. The class was all female, 12 students, and we were using the quarter system. The first quarter was mostly orientation, the second quarter was lab preparation for the operating room and the last two quarters were once weekly classes covering all the specialty areas of surgery while the students had four days of clinical in the assigned operating room.
On this day, I selected a particular student who had progressed very well in her skills to help me with a demonstration. She had been able to successfully pass off on her scrubbing, gowning and gloving of both herself and the surgeon. I played the role of the surgeon, and the student was to assume the role of a scrub technician. I introduced the class and the student to the surgical procedure we would imitate, and to the various instruments that would need to be used. Shortly, thereafter, it was time to begin the role-play for an acute abdominal procedure.
I did not enter the surgical area until the student had prepared the room for the mock surgical procedure. She correctly handed the towel for drying of my hands, then proceeded to gown and the glove the surgeon. We were ready to begin. A dummy model was used as we proceeded to correctly cover the operative area with the required drapes. The instrument stand contained all the necessary clamps, retractors and sutures. Together we clipped the suction and cautery to the prearranged areas on the sterile field. We were ready for the imaginary surgical procedure.
I called for the scalpel, and we proceeded through the layers of the mock patient. At that point I decided to make this as real as possible. Suddenly I announced that we had a massive amount of bleeding and I needed retractors and more kelIy clamps. I kept calling out for them as I continued to describe the massive bleeding, urgently adding that I needed more sponges & suction. She handed the instruments as needed and then the suction. At this point I increased my demand for more suction and the cautery to help control the bleeding.
Just as I asked for more large lap sponges to control all the massive bleeding, my student fainted! I ran to her side to make sure she was not hurt. As soon as she recovered, I asked her what happened?!
Her answer: It was all that blood!
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