PA School Tips: Surviving your Surgery Rotation
1. Etiquette
On your first day, be sure to introduce yourself to everyone in the OR, say you are a student, and let them know it’s your first time in an OR. Make sure to write your name on the whiteboard, with “PA-S” after your name. Ask them if they would like you to grab your gown and gloves, if yes go ahead and grab them. If they offer to do it for you let them know your glove size (7 is a good average size if you have no idea).
2. Scrubbing in
Some rotations, like my own, allowed me to practice scrubbing prior to my first real surgery. Regardless, try to be prepared for what this entails. This includes knowing how to gown up and put your gloves on, both assisted and unassisted. Also be hyper-aware of the sterile field and what breaks it. Know the positions you can stand in / where to put your hands that keeps sterility. If you do happen to break the sterile field (which you will at some point – we all do, even the surgeons), don’t panic. Just do as the scrub tech says and re-scrub or re-glove.
3. Outside of the OR
Surgery rotations involve much more than just surgery. You will likely be involved in pre-ops, post-ops, and morning rounds by the surgery consulting team. This means there will likely be other aspects of medicine involved aside from purely the surgical side. Make sure you are aware of this and be ready to be involved with other medical teams for the management of a surgical patient. At my rotation, I was also able to spend some days with other surgical specialties, so this may also be an option.
4. Pimping
If you haven’t yet heard of the term pimping –you will. This is when you are asked questions and supposed to take your best shot at answering. Sometimes they will continue asking progressively harder questions until they get to something you don’t know (to find the top of your knowledge on that subject). Pimping can be present on any rotation, but is more commonly associated with a surgical rotation.
Tips for this:
(1) Don’t be intimidated, it’s okay, it happens to all of us.
(2) Give it your best shot. And if you truly do not know something, just say you will look it up later and get back to them (if so, make sure you actually do this).
5. First Assisting
Depending on the rotation, you may get to first assist, and hopefully you do! This is great because as a certified and practicing PA, this is their role, so you would get a window into that as a student. So what is first assisting? First assisting is essentially the very next in line after the surgeon. Roles of the first assist vary on the type of surgery, the specialty, and the surgeon themselves, but in general you can expect things like retraction, suction, manning the laparoscopic camera, and suturing/closing. I got to first assist on my surgical rotation and I can say it can be intimidating at first, but is also very fun and a fantastic learning experience!
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Here is another article about PA school rotations “PA School Tips: Surviving Your Emergency Medicine Rotation”
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