In general I find that once I get the hang of certain motor skills I can do them well, but actually learning them somehow takes me several tries. For example, I'm in the OR doing a new stitch or something. The resident knows it's my first time, so she teaches me how to hold the needle driver, orient the needle, how far/deep/medial I need to push my needle through, etc etc. Obviously I screw up several steps on the first stitch, but then I screw up the EXACT same steps on subsequent stitches and the resident keeps having to remind me of the EXACT same thing she just said 3 seconds ago. Maybe by the 4th or 5th stitch I'm finally not making the same stupid mistake. Now I know it takes practice to learn these things, but these kinds of mistakes.. are they normal for med students? I just feel incompetent when I have to be reminded of the same thing more than a couple times in the span of a few min.
suture sadness
- Thread starter kwel
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Keep practicing. Competence won't be gained just in OR time.
I didn't suture much, and it showed, when as a 4th year I had to youtube "Simple interrupted suture" on my ER rotation
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I didn't suture much, and it showed, when as a 4th year I had to youtube "Simple interrupted suture" on my ER rotation
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Personally, if you want to suture or tie in the OR, you have to demonstrate basic skills when you show up. I don't care if you are a resident, intern, med student, or PA student, if you are unprepared, you don't get another chance that case. It takes time and practice to learn how to do most things and there is no reason why that should happen in the OR. You are not going to learn how to do a specific stitch the first, second, third or even 8th time that you do something. You are going to have to do it a couple dozen times to get the feel for how to do things.
Is it normal to feel like you are doing something that you have never done before? Yes. Are you going to make mistakes repeatedly after you just learned something? Yes. Are you going to get better by simply going to the OR? No. Put in the time outside of the OR and things will become a lot easier. It is obvious who puts in the time and who slacks off.
suture kit?
Haven't bought it but I was thinking about it before I start third year in about 7 months
http://www.theapprenticedoctor.com/secure/showitem.php?item_id=2
Haven't bought it but I was thinking about it before I start third year in about 7 months
http://www.theapprenticedoctor.com/secure/showitem.php?item_id=2
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Our book store sold needle driver + forceps + scissors for $8. You can get suture off of ebay or ask the scrub techs to save you suture from cases when they don't use it. I also bought 2 spools of 6lb test fishing line to practice knots with. No matter what anyone tells you, the quality of those instruments matters next to zero for the purposes of learning how to suture. Even the cheap disposable ones from the ER laceration kits would work fine.
i am thinking of getting this one before starting...it looks adaquate and is only $40
http://sim-vivo.com/simsuture.html
http://sim-vivo.com/simsuture.html
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The fake skin is maybe 5/10. The only advantage to it is that it is pretty darn big so even though it will fall apart pretty quick, you can always make new incisions. They sent me some boards to trial for our suture workshops, ended up going back to ethicon in the end. Fake skin is never going to really replicate real skin, but you can't really practice subcuticulars on that board more than once or twice per incision. The ethicon boards got ~5-6 uses per incision.
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You should have scissors, pickups, and needle driver from your anatomy kit.
You take sutures from the OR. They will hapily give you expired sutures for practice
To learn, go to a butcher and buy pig's feet and chicken breasts whenever you need to practice.
Go to You tube to learn all of the basic stitches
To learn to tie the knots for the sutures go to ethicon (http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=898726), they'll send you a knot tying board and a DVD demonstrating all the knots for free.
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Anatomy kit?
Here's the link for their FAQ which has the link to the contact form they want you to use.
http://www.ethicon.com/healthcare-professionals/support/faqs
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The tools you used to disect your cadaver in MS1.
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Ewww. Do people actually keep that stuff? Everyone I know threw it out or just left it in the lab. Seriously, it's less than 10 bucks to buy new suturing tools.
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They were always provided by the school's lab, no one bought/kept anything.
The tools that were split among 8 people and then, much like the rest of anything regularly used or worn into lab on dissection day (we rotated dissection days between 2 groups of 4 per body), was disposed of with great prejudice?
You don't really need a pair of special scissors (there's plenty of opportunities to cut sutures at the 2 med student lengths (too short or too long) during surgery and during c-sections on OB/Gyn), and a pair of pickups and needle drivers aren't going to be that expensive to buy.
