my first day in the hospital

my first day was interesting - i managed to ask where theatre was, and that i wanted to see the head of anaesthetics. but meeting him was a more difficult experience - he spoke no english at all. so he says something and leaves, and i stand there dumbly not knowing what i'm supposed to do. 5 min later an orderly escorts me to the 2nd floor change rooms to get changed (probably what i'd been told to do).

out the otherside of the change rooms - straight into a cardiac theatre. i'm met by an anaesthetist who thankfully spoke better english than i do. he did an anaesthesiology residency in the usa. so we chat about the case, and all was good.

the hospital is pretty good - clean, cardiac theatre has the important stuff - but not the bells and whistles. they're very efficient with consumables (no fancy opsite here - just some sticky tape -micropore goes over drips and incisions) - probably makes little difference in reality.

was pretty hard in theatre despite the anaesthetist speaking perfect english - the rest of the team talked in spanish (though the surgeon later said hi in the changeroom again in perfect english). that kind of makes it hard to be useful - even simple things like responding to the surgeons asking for the table height to be adjusted resulted in me staring blankly and saying " lo siento, me no hablas muchos espaniol".

the icu is old (we delivered the cabg patient to icu) - and has old equipment but it does the job. i must be getting old because i've used all of their equipment before - 12 years ago ! (eg. the bennet 7200 ventilators they use were old in australia in 1997 - but hey they worked OK even for lung transplants back then).

i didnt get to do much today - just watch and chat to the anesthetist. but i think now that that anaesthetist knows me, i've got more of a chance to get involved next time. unfortunately he's not on tomorrow - so the first part of this story will repeat tomorrow.