2011 Mission Trip to Cambodia
from Cody Chlasta, Nursing Student

We are back in Phnom Penh and starting home visits outside the city while the rest of the group is working in the hospital. Today was my first day back in the hospital since arriving from Ratanakiri. My clinical experience today was spent in the OR where I was able to witness a surgery on a patient who had been cut by a large knife or sword on both hands. It is only the second surgery I have seen, but I would like to try and compare and contrast the two. First of all the one I saw in the U.S. was an open heart surgery while the one I witness here in Cambodia was a reconstruction of the patients hands and wrists, so the surgeries had many procedural differences already. The surgery here had already started when I arrived in the OR. The surgeon started work on the left hand where he needed to fix two broken fingers through the use of screws and repairing tendons in the wrist. The same was done for the patient’s right hand as well. From what I saw everything the surgeon did for the patient here would have been done for a patient in the U.S. But like I said I have not witnessed this type of surgery yet in the United States. As for the staff in the room it was very much the same as in the U.S minus the perfusionist who is used in an open heart surgery and was not needed for this procedure. There was a first assistant who was helping the surgeon directly with the surgery whether it was cutting sutures or helping with moving the patient’s body into the correct position. There was also the anesthesiologist who monitored the patient’s vitals and another nurse assisting with supplies and lighting. Compared to the surgery I witnessed in the U.S I would say there is not much difference except for maybe the equipment here is slightly older. I left the OR feeling fascinated about how much they can repair the body after such extensive damage.

Continue reading →