Surgery Observation Beal 1
Surgery Observation
Micah Beal
Youngstown State University
Surgery Observation Beal 2
When I went down to surgery, I was greeted by the nurse who I would be shadowing for
the day. The first procedure I had saw was a lesion removal on the buttocks of a younger man,
then next was three lesion removals of on the head of a younger women, and lastly was a
Smartport placement on a younger woman. Throughout the paper I will be describing the
procedure for the surgery of the three-lesion removal on the younger women.
The younger woman was having these lesions removed due to the fact that it would help
prevent the lesion turning cancerous. Which from what the nurse had told me was a frequent
reason for a lesion removal. With a lesion removal not much is done the day before the
procedure, the only thing that the patient will do is sign the consent form which displayed the
number of lesions in which they would remove and the allowance to put her under sedation and
remove said lesions. Although, before the surgery the patient had found a fourth lesion on her
head that she was wishing to also remove. When the patient had found this, she had reported it to
the nurse I was with, and the nurse made a completely different consent form in which it would
state that there would be four lesions to remove. This made the process a little hectic because the
nurse had to get the charge nurse to call the doctor to sign another consent form when the surgery
was supposed to be started in the next 5 minutes. With this event, I had learned that there is a
schedule for surgery and the staff do not like having that schedule changed. Although, after the
new consent form was signed, the surgery was set to go. So, the nurse directed the patient’s
family to the surgery waiting room and we took the patient into the operating room. The patient
was extremely compliant and did not seem very nervous, but she had stated that she had a
concern with the anesthesia that she has “anesthesia panic attacks” after being administered any
form of anesthesia but was still wanting the surgery done. Regardless, obviously the anesthesia
was administered, and the surgery began. A nursing timeout was called by the circulating nurse
Surgery Observation Beal 3
prior to the surgery to ensure the identity of the patient, the procedure, number of lesions, and
any tests done prior which would affect the procedure. To start the surgery the physician shaved
a part of the patient’s hair to get a clear sight of the lesions. After the physician cut the hair, he
put chlorhexidine all over the lesions, and then the physician finally began the procedure. The
physician started by cutting down a lesions, and then opening said lesion and grabbing forceps
then pulling out the base of the lesion.
The surgical team involved a circulating nurse, a scrub nurse, a physician, physician’s
assistant, a Nurse Anesthetist, and a student becoming a Nurse Anesthetist. When it came to
working together during the surgery it was a lot different from the perspective of the nurses. The
scrub nurse was more than likely the most interactive piece of the surgical team, interacting with
both the physician/physician assistant and the circulating nurse. The CRNA’s tended to keep to
themselves throughout most of the procedure as their job is not very interactive with the surgical
team. Although, you could see that there was an incredible amount of communication between
the circulating nurse and the scrub nurse when there needed to be specimens collected. Along
with that the Scrub nurse communicated extremely well with the physician when he needed a
tool or anything extra.
When it came to the postoperative part of the surgery, I did not spend much time in the
post op area. Although with the younger woman with the three lesions removed had a quite
eventful post-op experience. When she said that she had “anesthesia panic attacks” she was not
lying. After the operation she was fine for a little bit but then proceeded to breath deeply and at a
faster pace. This was not alarming to the CRNA’s as they said that it’s been seen before and that
the post-op nurses know how to deal with situations that involve a patient going through an
episode of anxiety.
