Today, we arrived again at 8am and quickly moved to the OR to watch a robot surgery which was being completed by Dr. Boulton, who by this point we knew pretty well because we had sat in on many of his long surgeries. This patient needed a bypass surgery but refused to have a sternotomy (opening of the chest). This surgery with the robot was less invasive and involved sticking the arms of the robot through the ribs, which also has complications like an open heart surgery. Dr. Boulton controlled the robot from a machine in the corner of the room. We watched what was happening on a television that was showing what the camera was seeing inside the body. Below is a picture of the robot used in the surgery. It definitely took up most of the room.
This surgery lasted from about 8:30am- 1:30pm. After a quick lunch, we visited the patient whose surgery I watched on the very first day in the morning. That was the only patient that I had seen multiple times and gotten the most information on during my whole experience at WakeMed and it was very cool to be apart of that experience. We then learned a little bit more about EKG’s and looked at the EKG’s of many random patients in the hospital at that time just to see all the information you can learn about a patient just from their EKG. Dr. Hamrick then had another surgery, but it was one we had seen many times, so we sat in on that for 20 minutes, then called it a day.