trauma and burn elective

[cage92]

guys what should i be supposed to do in this rotation? there is no surgical time ? or only manage patient icu.....anyone with previeus experience can explain to me?

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[Winged Scapula]

guys what should i be supposed to do in this rotation? there is no surgical time ? or only manage patient icu.....anyone with previeus experience can explain to me?

Trauma is increasingly non- operative but I find it hard to believe there is "no surgical time". Burn patients will need debridement and grafting, others will need bedside procedures like Trachs and PEGs, dressing changes under anesthesia etc and there may be some ex-laps. But yes, this IS mostly critical care management rather than a heavy OR surgical rotation.

 

[VisionaryTics]

guys what should i be supposed to do in this rotation? there is no surgical time ? or only manage patient icu.....anyone with previeus experience can explain to me?

I did a burn rotation. We took burn ICU patients to the OR usually once a week (debridement and grafting), plus another day of minor OR stuff (grafts for outpatient burns, hidradenitis patients, random wound stuff).

The bulk of the work is ICU management of insanely sick patients. Major burn patients are basically in septic burn shock until they get completely grafted (months for big TBSA burns). A few hours of debridment and dressing changes per day, plus changing lines, etc. When a major burn comes in, they visit the OR a few times in the first week (escharotomy/fasciotomy/trach/PEG/bowel resections for shocked gut/etc), but then it's basically wound, sepsis, and cardiopulmonary care while you wait for enough skin to grow back to graft.

I learned a ton about ID, shock, fluid management, and wound care, but didn't spend too much time in the OR over 4 weeks.

 

[cage92]

thank you guyss

 

[Cytarabine]

Tagging on to this thread. Do you all feel, for someone not interested in surgery as a career, that rotating through trauma for surgery rotation would be a good option to learn knowledge that might translate better to other fields? What I've heard from friends is that our traima rotation is much less time in the OR, much more time rounding

 

[Top Gun]

It would be good if you wanted to do IM, especially critical care. You'll learn a ton about managing shock, fluid resuscitation, sepsis, ventilator support etc...

 

[Modafinil]

Smells nice too

 

[Cytarabine]

It would be good if you wanted to do IM, especially critical care. You'll learn a ton about managing shock, fluid resuscitation, sepsis, ventilator support etc...

Thanks, I was thinking along this line. Interested in med / peds subspecialties leaning toward h/o; seems like it would be a more beneficial experience than spending a bunch of time in the OR

 

[django7]

any advice on how to prepare for trauma elective. im starting mine soon

 

[Kaustikos]

any advice on how to prepare for trauma elective. im starting mine soon

Read up on how to manage trauma patients?

 

[django7]

surgery attending's are always telling me to read the huge surgery textbooks made for surgeons, i dont know if this is of value to a medical student as those books talk about surgical technique. any other good books out there besides surgical recall and essentials of surgery? albeit at an intermediate level

 

[VisionaryTics]

See if you can grab an ATLS course manual from one of the residents. Aside from that, trauma is mostly critical care. The good books to read are Marino's ICU Book or Paul Marik's book.

Both are really easy to read, very conversational, and really teach you the basics of caring for critically ill patients. Marik has a new edition coming out in a few months; one of my attendings gave me some printouts of chapters that are going to be in that book and they're phenomenal.