Surgery - observing in the OR? - answer from Pangolin possibly?

Question

ok, i'm 15 and getting ready to turn 16 in september, gonna be a sophomore in high school this year.

ok, well here's how it goes: I called the hospital, got redirected about 4 times to the surgery education department of - i dont even know where - and the person on there said you would have to be 18 to scrub in to the surgery to be an observer - and she was telling me about how it is extremely traumatic, but I really want to see if I'm going to be able to handle it, because i want to go to med school and eventually become a surgeon, and i wanna see if i can handle it NOW, which would be GREAT, or if I'm going to have to expose myself to things a little more. so, she told me that their place "was a separate entity" from my local hospital (which i called originally), so what should i do? I REALLY want to shadow a surgeon, but I'm still stumped how to go about it

my nearest hospital is Clarian West Medical Center in Avon, Indiana:

http://www.clarian.org/portal/ClarianWest

Answer 1

Good answers above mine.

It might be tough at your age to get into an OR. You might try asking your local hospital if there are any volunteering opportunities with the anesthesia techs. Those are the people who help us out with equipment and setting up invasive lines, and getting things for us (we can't leave the OR during a case). It's a back door into the OR. You'd get to see a lot without being an official "observer".

You need to meet a surgeon in your area who would be amenable to showing you what he/she does. You can try podiatrists - they do surgery too, and might be more accessible.

Just keep working at it.

If you are sure that you're going into medicine, you'll get into the OR eventually. And you won't be "traumatized". It's usually the nursing students that get queasy. (Those little girls drop like flies.)

I didn't set foot in an OR until I was in college. After I volunteered at University of MD Hospital for a summer, I was allowed to observe an operation. (A hernia - big deal) I got to wear scrubs and stand in the corner, but I thought it was the coolest thing ever. All the body parts I'd ever seen up to that point were in formalin, and I was amazed at how colorful it all was.

Another way to get into an OR is to HAVE surgery, but that's a bit drastic...

You'll get there eventually. Good luck.

Answer 2

In recent years it has become more difficult to get around patient privacy. In other words, the patient has to agree to be observed by persons other than those necessary for the procedure. Secondly, each hospital has rather rigid rules about entrance into any patient care area, and especially the operating rooms. Thirdly, most operation rooms do not have the theater viewing area that you see on Grey's Anatomy.

You might have better success contacting a veterinarian about watching animal surgery. The rules are less complex.

After all, most of us MD's started out with animal models, anyway. It's a good way to begin.

Sorry, I'm not Pangolin.

Answer 3

If I were you.....

I would talk to people around town and find out who the good surgeons are. It would be easier to talk to a surgeon and see if you can observe one of his or her surgeries. It might be easier for a surgeon to cut through a hospitals red tape than it would be for you to work your way through.

If you did convince a hospital to let you observe surgery, then you would still have to convince a surgeon to let you watch. If you need to convince both the hospital and the surgeon, it might be easier to convince the doctor first.

About scrubbing..... technically, you aren't going to scrub. You are going to observe. Scrubbing is when you take 6 minutes to wash your hands before you put the gown and gloves on. The rules for scrubbing and observing might be different. (I was told this in explicit detail as they were putting the masking tape on my forehead with my name in big black magic marker the first time I say a surgery as a student)

Talking to nurses, PAs, or anesthesiologists might get you into the OR too. They might be able to arrange an observation.

Your last option would be to talk to a nursing/medical school. Tell them that you might be interested in enrolling but you want to see a surgery first.

I know it's something that you want to do, but you might have to wait until you are 18 for legal reasons.

Also, don't listen to anybody who doesn't work in the OR about how traumatic it is. Very few people have big problems with it. I did have to break sterile one time as a resident to catch the student who was going to pass out into the surgical field.

Answer 4

You have so much time to decide what you want. You still need to go to undergraduate school anyway.

You will have a lot of time during college to get experience shadowing.