Today was amazing! I had the opportunity to witness numerous operations that I have never been able to see. From knee replacements to knee scopes, I saw many types of procedures in the orthopedic field.
To begin my internship, I traveled to Clinton, NC. At 7:00 this morning, I met Dr. Huff at the Sampson Regional Medical Center. We then dressed i nto our scrubs and entered the operating room. Our first procedure was a knee replacement. The purpose of a knee replacement is to reduce the pain from bone on bone arthritis in the knee joint. There are even different sizes of knee replacements so the new knee joint will fit the current bone structure of the previous knee. While the tools that were used in the surgery were intense, the actual surgery was very intricate. All of the fittings were precise with no compromises. Multiple times, irrigation was used in order to prevent the chance of infection from the replacement. To reduce tension in the operating room, Dr. Huff even played music on a speaker that he had.
After our second knee replacement, we proceeded to do a knee scope. In this procedure, Dr. Huff used a camera to enter the knee joint. When he could see the knee with his camera, he then used multiple tools to take inflamed tissue from the joint. By removing the tissue from the knee joint, Dr. Huff delayed the amount of time until the patient would need to have a knee replacement.
Following our quick lunch break, I shadowed Dr. Huff as he repaired a fractured patella, or kneecap. In the operation, he used a wire to tie the two parts of the patella together so they could heal. After the operation, we then went to his office to do patient consults. This was particularly interesting because I had never been on the medical side of being a patient. At this time of the day, I was able to see the human aspect of the medical profession. After the surgeries, it was nice to finally interact with the patients.
Overall, I had an excellent first day, and I could not thank Dr. Huff more for allowing me to shadow his work. As of now, I’m looking forward to another bright and early start for tomorrow!
