Night Surgeries

So the schedule that doctors work here is definitely very different than back home in Canada. There are few patients and work to be done before 11am and most scheduled surgeries at this hospital take place from 9pm into the wee hours of the morning. It is very weird. I have been able to watch a couple surgeries and the facilities at the private hospital I am at now are definitely much better than at the government run hospital I was at last time. Some patients have paid for private rooms with a bathroom and sometimes with a TV. Even the common wards are nicer - though not Canadian standards of course. There are probably 20 patients in a room with half walls between every couple beds, but fans and plug ins. I guess this is what money can buy in Bangladesh. In Lalimonirhat wehn I explained our public healthcare a doctor seemed amazed and kept posing different situations to me, "so if I came in the middle of the night and needed an emergency appendectomy....it would still be free, doctors would come?"

As for surgeries, I have seen a hysterectomy, circumcision, and hernia repair here - all things I know nothing about. I also finally saw the use of general anesthetic - I had begun to think it was just spinal blocks for all! In the middle of the intubation, the power went out and while the hospital has generators, there is always a moment before they kick in that we are left in the dark. I have been spending most of my time with the Obs/gyn doctors and hopefully I can remember some of the things I am learning come block 4. One of the doctors I am with takes my recognition of the names of structures she mentions to mean that I know all about anatomy - which in the case of the abdomen and reproductive structures, is definitely not the case. I got a taste of what upcoming clinical placements will be like - me standing by and watching the surgery and her saying, "in order from outside to inside, list all of the tissues I cut through and then what types of stitches we are using to close everything back up!" and various other questions, putting me on the spot and making me feel like an idiot as I don't know the answers.