Surgery Skillz

What does a second semester second year veterinary student do you ask? Well, we get to start taking the "fun" classes. You know, the ones we came to veterinary school to take. Pathology II; Avian, Fish and Exotic Animal Diseases, Anesthesiology, Introduction to Clinical Medicine, Clinical Neurology, Epidemiology, Veterinary Public Health and Surgical Skills. 

What do we do in surgical skills? We learn all about the princples of surgery! Asepsis, scrubbing/gowning/gloving, prepping and draping a patient, and the fun part - learning suture patterns! We all felt like we were real doctors back in 1st term when we learned how to do a physical exam on a patient. And then we spent the next two semesters taking classes that taught us how to really build on that exam and help us to localize the lesion. Now we feel giddy because we are learning surgeon's material! We learned how to look cool holding a stethoscope, now we're learning how to look cool holding surgical instruments and tying knots. Next term, we get to learn how to wield the ever-mighty scapel blade! Real doctors eventually!

We have a surgical skills practical exam tomorrow afternoon. It consists of several continuous patters and quite a few interrupted patterns, and this is only part one! We still have two more units to go after this! A complete surgical knot, the cruciate stitch, interrupted vertical and horizontal mattresses, the surgeon's knot, simple continuous, ford interlocking, continuous horizontal mattress, and intradermal (with two separate tie off techniques). Fancy, huh?