day 3 - gi services

Today was my first day volunteering in the GI Services Patient Area. It was a large room full of 30+ patient beds. The first 8 beds were used for prepping patients for surgery and the rest were used for patient recovery. I worked with Janon, a medical technician, and Darlene, one of the sweetest nurses you'll ever meet. I was on my feet for over 5 hour cleaning and changing each patient's bed as they were discharged. Occassionally, when there was down time, I was allowed to visit patients and provide them with warm blankets and drinks if permittable by the doctor.

Things I learned today:
- Each unit is like a family. The sooner you get to know everyone (by name and face), the easier it is to adjust to work.
- Everyone is friendly: the nurses, technicians, janitors, and some doctors. Some doctors are too wrapped up in their work to be aware of their surroundings.
- The hospital has a very fast paced environment. There's always patients coming in and out, patients who require assistance, paperwork to be filled out, etc.
- There is a large chart that displays every surgery that will occur that day, which includes the room number, time, the nurse and tech assisting the doctor, and the doctor's initials. There's one doctor that's AMAZING; he performed at least 10 operations that day. Talk about extreme endurance.

Favorite experience of the day:
I watched my first endoscopy procedure today. The doctors discovered that the patient had cancer in her throat, so they performed a cryo procedure to freeze the cancer cells in her throat to hopefully, destroy the cancer. In the room, there were two doctors, one nurse, a technician, and an anesthesiologist. It was intriguing to see how the doctors performed the operation with such confidence. The doctor inserted the endoscope as if it were second nature to her. It was also amazing to see how advanced techonology is today, for most of the procedure was purely based on the use of computers. The coolest part of the procedure was watching them find the location of the cancer and performing the cryo. The scariest part of the procedure was when the patient started choking on the endoscope and awoke in the middle of the procedure. Scariest thing ever...

Things to look forward to:
- Observing more endoscopy and colonoscopy procedures.
- Interacting with patients more.
- Learning more about the G.I. field