A glimpse into the operating room

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 28/03/2016 (3626 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Sisler High School students witnessed a live surgery last week without having to scrub up.

On March 22, Sisler hosted a surgery from Pan Am Clinic through high-definition video conferencing. With technology provided by Frontier School Division, the live stream and video conference of the surgery was viewed by students at Sisler and over 1,200 students in northern Manitoba, as well as students in schools in Ontario, New York, Nevada, England and Taiwan.

The live surgery broadcast was part of an ongoing educational video conferencing series at Sisler called
SoapBox.ED.

“We do it to bring as many possibilities and opportunities to our students as possible, to make it real for them and make it meaningful,” said Sisler teacher Jonathan Dyck-Lyons.

“These students are actually seeing something that’s happening right now. It’s not like bringing in a video, there’s an actual connection. They have a link directly into that surgery room. That makes it that much more of a meaningful experience for them.

“Hopefully for our science students it opens up that possibility, ‘I’ve seen this happen. I’ve almost been there. I can imagine myself in the same position. This is something I want to strive for.’ The live aspect is a game changer for education.”

The surgery — performed by Dr. Jonathan Marsh at Pan Am Clinic — was a left in-situ ulnar nerve decompression.

In layman’s terms, the patient’s surgery was on the funny bone nerve.

The patient, a 58-year-old male welder, required the surgery because the stress on his ulnar nerve had led to cubital tunnel syndrome, which can cause numbness and tingling in the ring and pinky fingers and weakness in the hand. Marsh explained to the students that non-operative treatments were unsuccessful in this case, so surgery was required.

The first question of the surgery came from a student at Luxton School in Winnipeg, who asked “What does the nerve feel like?”

“It’s actually feels rubbery. Have you ever eaten a gummy worm? That’s what it feels like to touch it. We have to be very careful when we’re working on it so that we don’t damage it. It is very fragile,” Marsh said.

The questions kept rolling in, with a student in Taiwan asking “If the patient didn’t have surgery, would they lose total sensation?” and a student in England asking “What are the risks of the surgery?”  

Isabela Aguila, a Grade 9 student, was one of the Sisler students to ask Dr. Marsh a question.

“My question was ‘How did you determine the amount of anesthetic used for a patient?’ He said it was mostly determined by their body weight,” Aguila told The Times.

While some Sisler students either covered their eyes or were bug-eyed during the surgery, with one student actually fainting, Aguila didn’t seem too phased by the ordeal. In fact, as she talked to The Times, she chowed down on one of the powdered jelly donuts that were available at the event.

“It’s a real person, so you see it in all of its disgusting splendor,” Aguila said. “It’s inside of us. It’s better we know what’s inside us now than fainting in university. That would suck.”