Surgical Boot Camp, Day 1

This month I am taking an honest-to-god real class as an elective. The class is "Advanced Surgical Skills", or as everyone in the class calls it, "ASS." The class is put on by the department of surgery for students going into general surgery or a surgical subspecialty (as a way to beef up on surgical knowledge and skills before internship begins). It is the same class that they give to all the surgical interns at Detroit Medical Center.

Yesterday was day 1.

Day 1 kicked my ass.

The day started off slow, mostly because the snowpocalypse of 2011 was hiding around the corner, waiting to pounce, resulting in many people arriving late. Dr. Steffes, the surgery clerkship director, treated those of us fortunate enough to live 5 minutes away with a wonderful story about how no one becomes anything without practice. This finished with Dr. Mattos, the course director, stating, "I know some of you think this is a blow-off course. I can assure it is not. You will need to work hard this month to make this course worth your time. You will also have to keep working after it ends to maintain your skills until July."

Then the day really started... 8 hours of testing.

Test 1: 50 surgical instruments were laid out and we were required to name each one and their category. Now initially this doesn't seem too horrible, but then you realize, that although you've heard the names of them all, you don't actually know what they are all called. Needless to say, it was an uncomfortable test that resulted in many answers of "curved clamp" and "pick-ups without teeth." My categories were tying, cutting, holding, grabbing, and visualization; pretty sure those are not legit categories.

Test 2: Knot Tying. Here is something I'm good at... Or so I thought. For you non-surgical types, yes there is a way to throw a correct knot, and there's more than one type of knot. We will be taught the correct way to tie knots tomorrow. Pretty sure I got a 60% or less on all 4 exercises.

Test 3: Suturing. Now mind you, everyone up till this point has complimented me on my suturing technique. Not here, my friends. I don't think I finished a single task in the allotted 5 minutes and the clerkship director commented on how horribly I handle a needle-driver. Crap.

Test 4: Anatomy. At this point I wanted to cry out, "KILL ME NOW!" 199 blanks later, 60% were blank and probably another 37% were wrong, I wanted to cry and was barely able to pull my fractured ego across the floor to lunch.

Lunch was at least a little reassuring. All 12 of us were in the same boat, feeling like the last 3 1/2 years were a complete waste, as we knew absolutely nothing.

Test 5: The Bead Task. 1 Suture. 10 1 mm beads, 10 3 mm beads, and 10 5 mm beads. 1 needle driver. 1 Debakey and 1 Adsons. The task, string the beads forehand and backhand. This means 4 different configurations (forehand/backhand with the Debakeys and forehand/backhand with the Adsons) plus a 5th of string as many as possible forehand/backhand in 3 minutes (90 seconds each way). Also, you have to count your bead/ needle drops. It may sound easy, but my hands beg to differ. Muscle fatigue sets in and the tremors get worse.

That's all we were able to finish yesterday... but we still have yet to take the FLS (Fundamentals of Laparoscopic Surgery) pre-test tomorrow.

On the docket for every evening: 100 knots. Prepping PMP (read: pimp... but it means patient management problems). Prepping Surgical Anatomy. Prepping Surgical Skills Modules.

So much for an easy rotation.

All that being said though, I'm super excited for the month. I'm excited to learn. I'm excited to spend time with my friends as we slowly pull ourselves through the class. Generally, I'm just excited.