Mah mad assistin’ skillz

February 7, 2008 at 8:16 pm | Posted in internship, neurosurgery | 4 Comments

Ahhhh! Back on neurosurgery!

It’s been two days, and already I’ve scrubbed in on two operations. All spine, but then nearly every spine surgeon I’ve met has been loads of fun in the OR. There have been one or two exceptions, but by and large it’s been the rule.

Today the surgeon complimented me on how well I assisted with the surgery. But it’s easy to be a good assistant when you’re interested in what’s going on and you’ve seen and done enough to know how to help. Although up to this point, I’ve generally avoided spine cases if at all possible, so that doesn’t really explain it.

I think it’s just that I got some really excellent teaching on my neurosurgery sub-I’s. I was fortunate to encounter a number of chiefs and seniors who were excellent surgeons themselves, and who took time to teach me how to hold and work with the various tools. I still don’t know the names of all the tools–there’s a bewildering array of them, and for one thing I can never keep all the Penfields straight. But I definitely feel more at home operating on the brain or spine than the abdomen.

But this whole deal with neurosurgeons being malignant personalities…I just don’t get it.