Today is July 4th, 2022. We have officially passed the halfway point of our time in the Philippines. This week we rotated to the Surgical unit at SFCFC. On the first day in the unit we spent most of the time observing procedures and getting an idea of how the flow of surgery looks, Sir Jeff also familiarized us with surgical tools used, and also what the Post Anesthesia care Unit (PACU) looks like in the Philippines. After our day of orientation, the rest of the week was spent with Mia Aileen and me taking turns scrubbing into surgeries and acting as surgical nurse assistants. This was an amazing experience as this has been the first time I have been able to scrub into surgery and help out. It was super cool to be a part of the surgical team. However, I am not sure if I could see myself working on a surgical unit in the future as it involved a lot of standing (I stood for 5 hours straight for one surgery) and keeping my hands still not to break sterility which is not my strong suit. However, we still got to practice and observe many nursing skills during the pre and post-surgery phase as we administered medications, set up IVs, and transferred patients. On top of scrubbing into surgery, we also got to observe many more procedures such as colonoscopies, gastroscopies, and endoscopies as they were also performed within the OR unit. Another great experience was we learned about the newborn screening test and even helped perform it a little as the babies who were delivered in the hospital came to the OR for the test. Overall it was a super interesting and exciting week in the OR filled with meeting a bunch of great people. I am excited to see what the second half of this trip has in store for me.
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