Saturday, December 11, 2010

Surgery week

This week we continued to learn about the different surgeries we were allowed to help in. The first one we learned was a simple intubation. An intubation is when we insert a long tube down someone’s throat to help them breath. The surgery is not hard and in fact does not even including cutting someone open.

The next surgery we learned about was a Cricoidotomy. This is a more sever intubation, where a small incision is made in the neck, between the thyroid gland and the Cricoid. The surgery is not long, only supposed to last 6-7 min.

The final surgery we learned was how to put in a chest tube. This is done when someone has a Pneumothorax and therefore their lung is either not inflated or something has gotten into the pleura membrane and is squeezing the lung. The Surgery is the most complicated one we have learned so far and is the most successful one of all.

Some other things we did this week:

A training exercise on someone who has had a heat stroke.

A test in pharmacology (where we are test on what drugs to give, what is inside the drug and why do you give that drug)

A class on poisonous animals

Next week will be a more physical week where we start mass casualties.

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