This week was my first week as a final year student. Monday morning everyone arrived quite early in anticipation for their first day in clinics. My group was starting on small animal orthopaedic surgery (surgery of bones). In terms of small animal stuff, this is probably quite a bit lower on my interests so I was a little disappointed to be starting with it. But very quickly I realized that the clinician, resident, intern and the nurse were going to make it a great week.
I got the first consult of the week and it was just a recheck appointment and x-ray for a fracture. I went and got the history from the client brought it back and presented it to the intern and it went quite well. She then asked for my plan. I wasn't prepared for thinking quite so early on the first day! But with a little prodding I came up with an accepted plan which we then executed. Orthopaedics was a little less busy than some other rotations will be so it was my only case for the week, but I got involved in lots of others.
The highlights of the week were being able to scrub into a tibial plateau levelling osteotomy surgery. It is how they repair cruciate (knee ligament) injuries in dogs. The equivalent injury in humans would be an ACL tear. We also got to watch spinal surgery which was quite interesting. We filled the down time with lots of tutorials on things like arthritis, hip problems and back problems and looking at fractures and devising management plans.
The clinician did a great job of asking us lots of questions to get us thinking but also not being intimidating. Throughout my education career because I am shy I have only really ever answered questions when I am 100% confident in the answer. Well this year there are going to be lots of times where I'm not 100% sure on the answer and will have to give it a go. He was a great person to work with first to get over that fear of being wrong. If anyone said anything particularly silly he would make a joke about it and we would all have a laugh. It was such a nice environment to be in and because of it my whole group felt like we learned a lot.
At the end of the week the clinician gave us individual feedback on things we did well and how we can improve. He gave me really complimentary feedback which was a really nice way to start my rotations. While I still don't have any plans to become an orthopaedic specialist, this week has made me a lot more interested in it. Next up is Soft Tissue Surgery!
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| Got my stuff all ready to go for day one |
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| My group has started a buster collar (aka the cone of shame) building competition. I am currently in the lead with a time of 27 seconds. Admittedly only one other person has tried to build one and they gave up... but hey got to take pride in being in the lead for at least a bit! |
