Season 4: Episode Seven

Renal Transplantation

Michelle B

Jennifer C

Stephanie GW

OPERATING ROOM PERSPECTIVES

Objective: 

For our podcast we gathered wonderful people to interview and will ask them questions about Renal Transplants. Questions will be split between three perspectives, a patient, a donor, and a certified surgical first assist. Michelle will ask one patient questions about what it is like to be on the kidney transplant list due to renal failure. As surgical technologist students, it is important for us to have an understanding of what the patient is experiencing during the time we see them because most of the time we are not able to speak with them about their post surgical experiences. Stephanie will interview a kidney donor. Donating an organ and undergoing surgery is a beautiful selfless act. Gathering information from a donor will give us a different perspective about what it means to be an altruistic person. Lastly, Jennifer will ask a certified surgical first assist (CSFA) about renal transplant surgery and the role of a CSFA.

In conclusion, as students in the surgical tech program, we all agree that patient centered care is our main priority. As healthcare professionals we must advocate for the patient every time we step into an operating room. Understanding what our patients go through will make us better surgical technologists in the future, which is why we chose a patient and a donor to interview. Finally, CSFAs help guide us as students by giving us the perspective of what it is like working alongside doctors and understanding procedures, like renal surgery, in greater depth.

Main Topic: Renal Transplant

Details and Feedback:  

• Michelle introduces and interviews father in law patient

Questions:

1. How long have you lived with renal disease? And what does everyday life look like for you?
2. What is the process of getting on the transplant list?
3. What would getting a kidney mean for you?
4. What concerns do you have for the surgery/ recovery itself?
5. In what ways will this surgery impact your life?

            TRANSITION MUSIC

• Stephanie introduces and interviews donor

Questions:

1. When was the moment you realized you were ready to donate a kidney to someone in need? 
2. What prompted you to make this decision?
3. What has the process been like for you?
4. What is something you have learned about yourself in going through this process?
5. While this will be life changing for an individual in need how will this change your life? 

TRANSITION MUSIC

• Jennifer introduces and interviews CSFA

Questions:

1. How long have you been a Certified Surgical First Assist?
2. How many transplants have you assisted? How many were renal transplants?
3. What is your job during a transplant?
4. How long does this surgery usually take?
5. What is the expected outcome for the recipient and donor?

Final Summation:

Group members come together for final summation

References

Information about organ donation statistics. (February 2021 last updated) Retrieved March 10, 2021, from organdonor.gov

Donor, Christina Herrera, interviewed March 15, 2021

Recipient, Christopher Bonilla, interviewed March 15, 2021 CST, Derrick, interviewed March 15, 2021

Season 4: Episode Six

Evil Surgeons

Stoney Rincones, Jocelyn Gonzalez, Jamie Flores 

 Doctors from Hell 

Introduction/summation: For this podcast, we will be discussing “evil” surgeons, and how these incidents could have possibly been avoided if the surgical team was more aware and used their surgical conscience.

Main topic: Stoney will be discussing Christopher Duntsch, the local doctor death from the Dallas Plano area.  Jamie will be discussing Kermit Gosnell and Steven Massof who practiced in Philadelphia. Jocelyn will be talking about Eric Scheffey aka “Dr. Evil”, who was an orthopedic surgeon from the Houston area.

Feedback:  We will have a conversation about each of the surgeons mentioned above and how the O.R team/staff could have avoided these tragic incidents.

Final summation: Our group will tie all main topics back to surgical conscience, and how our role as surgical technologist is to be the patient’s advocate. Together we can save lives!! 

References

Stoney-

Dr. Death: The Shocking Story of Christopher Duntsch, a Madman with a Scalpel. (2021, February 8). D Magazine. https://www.dmagazine.com/publications/d-magazine/2016/november/christopher-duntsch-dr-death/

ProPublica. (2020, March 2). A Surgeon So Bad It Was Criminal. https://www.propublica.org/article/dr-death-christopher-duntsch-a-surgeon-so-bad-it-was-criminal

Three Days In Dallas | 1 – Dr. Death. (2018, September 4). IHeartRadio. https://www.iheart.com/podcast/272-dr-death-29758801/episode/three-days-in-dallas-1-29798001/

Wikipedia contributors. (2021, March 10). Christopher Duntsch. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Duntsch

Jamie-  

Slobodzian, J. A. S. (2013, April 5). Staffer at clinic describes “residency” in assisting Gosnell. https://Www.Inquirer.Com. https://www.inquirer.com/philly/news/local/20130405_Staffer_at_clinic_describes__residency__in_assisting_Gosnell.html

Report of the grand jury. (2011). https://cdn.cnsnews.com/documents/Gosnell,%20Grand%20Jury%20Report.pdf

Jocelyn-

Gwynne, S. C. “Dr. Evil.” Texas Monthly, 1 Sept. 2005, http://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/dr-evil/. 

Season 4: Episode Five

Being a Student in the OR

Introduce ourselves (Maria, Fabiola, and Yazmin) this will be a conversation type podcast between three scrub students and our experience as new students in the OR

·  Main topics:

               1. Yazmin will introduce our first topic: What we expected coming into the OR. (everyone walking around like crabs, more chaos, more blood, longer surgeries, every surgeon being mean, etc.)

     2. Fabiola will be introducing our next topic: The reality of how the OR actually is (setting up early, sterility, not as sterile as it should be, calling instruments by different names, never before seen instruments, reality of our anatomy and actual size, how rough the surgeons are during surgery.

     3. Maria will be introducing our last topic: Important skills you need to make it in the OR (Anticipation, having good hearing, multi-tasking being able to count and hear at the same time, staying organized, knowing your surgeons preference

·  Summary: Thank our audience for listening in on our podcast, encourage them to listen to our classmates episodes and say our goodbyes.

·  We all came up with multiple podcast ideas and decided together which topic we would choose for our podcast. We ended up combining a couple of our ideas and including them as main topics.

Season 4: Episode Four

Orthopedic Surgery

For our proposal, we decided to focus on ortho cases specifically the most common
breaks that occurred and the type of surgeries on how to correct them. We will also be talking about common injuries and damages that can occur to joints and bones, and finally, we will discuss amputation and how it is performed. Karina and Kelsey will be doing the research while Alondra would be doing do the speak portion for the podcast.

References

1. Jones, N. (2020, April 1). The Most Common Broken Bones in the Body: The Top 10. Enable Law. https://www.enablelaw.com/news/expert-opinion/most-common-broken-bones-top-10/
2. the Healthline Editorial Team. (2018, September 17). Bone Fracture Repair. Healthline. https://www.healthline.com/health/bone-fracture-repair#outlook
3. Why You May Need Surgery for a Fracture. (2019, November 8). Orthopedics Associates. https://www.oaidocs.com/2019/02/22/why-you-may-need-surgery-for-a-fracture/
4. The Top 10 Most Common Orthopedic Surgeries (all taken from: “Top 10 Most Common Orthopedic Surgeries.” The Orthopedic Clinic, 14 June 2018, orthotoc.com/common-orthopedic-surgeries.) https://www.beaumont.org/health-wellness/blogs/common-reasons-for-visiting-an-orthopedic-doctor

“Amputation | Orthopedic Medical Center.” Dr.Leonardo Practice-Sites, 2020, https://orthomedctr.com/amputation.php

Season 4: Episode Three

CST’s and Surgical Conscience

Group C is made up of Michala, Elizabeth Ramirez, and Alondra Vargas. We are all
playing an equal role in our group project/podcast, meaning we all worked together to choose the topic and we will all be speaking in the podcast recording. We may do some individual research, but the majority of our reference information will come from our CST text. After discussing a few different potential topics, we decided to speak about the OR team and their responsibilities, along with our thoughts on surgical conscious and how it relates to patient safety. Our instructors
have spoken to us so often about the importance of surgical conscious, so we decided that this idea should be more widespread. Michala is going to be the first one to speak, so I will be doing a short introduction to let the audience know who we are and what we will be discussing in our episode. Then I will begin with the roles of the surgeon and the first assist/physician assistant. To end my segment, I will
introduce the idea of surgical conscious and discuss what it means to me. The second segment will come from Alondra V. She is speaking about the role/responsibilities of the surgical technologist, along with her version of surgical conscious. Lastly, the third segment, will be from Elizabeth R. She will wrap up the OR team by talking about the circulator and the anesthesia team, then finish off with her thoughts on surgical conscious. We will have a conclusion at the end that summarizes the OR team, and addresses the fact that although they all have separate tasks throughout surgery, they are all working together to provide the best quality care to the
patient (specifically through using their surgical conscious.)

References

Chambers, Karen L. “Patient Safety EQuals: Aseptic Technique, Surgical Conscience and Time

Out.” AST.org, The Surgical Technologists, 2013, www.ast.org/articles/2013/2013-03-

351.pdf

Frey, K.B. (2018) Surgical technology for the surgical technologist: A positive care approach.

Boston, MA: Cengage Learning 

Season 4: Episode Two

History of Surgical Technology

Stephanie, Tara, and Diana will talk about the history of surgical technologists and how areas of medical professions relate to it, dating back from ancient cultures to today’s period of modern technology. Stephanie will talk about the origins of surgery starting from Egypt until it became more mainstream to the general public in all civilizations and why it was needed.  This time frame will stop once surgical technologists are needed in the World Wars of Europe and the qualifications, sterility and needs of STs will be discussed. Diana will discuss surgical technologists’ introduction to the medical field and their many different titles and responsibilities throughout decades until STs became a profession in 1973. Then she will discuss the qualifications of that time to become a surgical technologist and what sterilization was at the time. After that Diana will discuss how STs changed over time according to standards and small introductions of technology in surgeries. Tara takes over at the year of 2000 when the Da Vinci robot system was introduced into general surgery for the use of the general. She will also discuss the roles of modern day surgical technologist and modern day qualifications needed to become one. Sterile processing will be reviewed over how it meets today’s standards and how sterilization can be changed or improved in the future. Tara will then end the podcast by discussing the future of surgical technologists as robot technology becomes more advanced in surgery.

References

Admin. (2017, February 27). The history of Surgical Technology. Retrieved March 19, 2021, from http://www.onlinestartupbox.com/news/the-history-of-surgical-technology/

American Institute of Medical Sciences & Education. (2020, August 19). The history and future of Surgical Technology. Retrieved March 19, 2021, from https://aimseducation.edu/blog/present-and-future-of-the-surgical-technologist-profession

The latest Surgical Technology News:. (2013, April 29). Retrieved March 19, 2021, from https://www.medgadget.com/archives/surgery/page/76

Rubin, A., & Rubin, A. (2016, February 11). History of instrument sterilization. Retrieved March 19, 2021, from https://www.flushinghospital.org/newsletter/history-of-instrument-sterilization/

Skellie, B., Conklin, R., Warnock, K., Bskellie, Elizabeth, & Fengler, D. (2020, April 11). A brief history of sterilization. Retrieved March 19, 2021, from https://brnskll.com/shares/a-brief-history-of-sterilization/

Surgical techs and new technology in the OR. (2019, July 02). Retrieved March 19, 2021, from https://mkecc.edu/news-events/blog/surgical-techs-new-technology/

The technological future of surgery. (2019, May 10). Retrieved March 19, 2021, from https://medicalfuturist.com/the-technological-future-of-surgery/

Season 4: Episode One

COVID-19 in Surgery

Caroline, Mayce, and Kimberly have decided to do our episode under the umbrella topic of COVID-19 with us each contributing individually to collaborate different perspectives of the medical field as affected by the pandemic.

The first contributor to the episode will be Caroline, she will be introducing the episode topic as well as sharing research covering the subtopic of lung transplants in patients with severe cases of COVID-19.

Mayce will go second in the episode, presenting an interview with her mother who is a Midwife/NP. They will be covering the COVID-19 topic from a working perspective, meaning they will discuss the impact on work in office as well as hospital, and how things have had to be adjusted to accommodate patients during the pandemic.

Finally, Kimberly will go last and round out the episode with an additional interview of former students of the surgical tech program to present a student perspective of the transition to getting an education during a pandemic. I will interview Karla and Shalee to understand how they feel the pandemic affected their education and career, as well as what they gained from the experience and advice they may have for future students.

These are a few questions we are planning to ask in my interview:

1. Introduce yourself (name, specialty, why you decided to become a surgical technologist.)
2. What were notable differences in your typical clinical day before and after COVID-19 started as a student?
3. How did the pandemic affect your perspective of your career choice, did it instill more confidence, or question your choice to be a surgical technician?
4. How has the pandemic changed your perspective on things that you might have taken for granted (PPE)?
5. With the cancellation of elective surgeries due to COVID, did that affect your choice of specialty due to possibly not experiencing certain fields of surgery?
6. What skills do you feel helped you succeed as a student through the pandemic and what advice can you offer to future CST students?