January 10th: Morning ceremony…Nakornping Hospital (OR & Alternative medicine)

---

Today we started the day with some pork and rice that was delicious and attended morning ceremony. After morning ceremony, we went to the hospital and when we got there I volunteered to go into the OR for the day. I was excited for the opportunity to see how surgeries were done differently in Thailand, but to my surprise they are actually very similar. There were two options for surgery and I ended up going into the hip replacement surgery. The patient was an 80-year-old who had fallen and fractured the head of her femur. When they brought the patient in she was completely awake and looked scared about what was to come. They put her on the operating table and started tying her hands down and covering her with sterile blankets and they anesthesiologist came in and gave her a neuromuscular blocker but nothing to put the patient to sleep or relieve anxiety. The preparation of the surgical sight was very similar to the United States and I noted that the surgery was very clean and although some blood did squirt, it was a relatively neat and organized process. It was amazing to see them cut and pull out the head of the femur and then drill a hole into her femur to insert the prosthetic ball and socket joint. I could not help but feel so bad for the patient though because they treated the surgery as more of a task to be completed and really did not acknowledge the patient at all throughout the whole surgery. She was awake and able to hear all the drilling and hammering and was probably very anxious, but no one stopped to try and comfort her or talk her through it. This experience is one that I have been noticing a lot in Thailand. They understand the idea of holistic patient care, but I do not see it carried out very much in the hospital setting. It is also a part of their culture I have noticed to be very stoic and not show pain or fear. This demeanor is very different from that in America where people express every feeling and every emotion. After seeing the hip surgery, I was able to go into the laminectomy surgery that was about half way over. They had a screen on the wall that showed the whole surgery and it was cool to see how the used an auto bone graft to fill in the missing bone. Luckily the patient was under general anesthesia in this procedure so that made me feel a lot better. Again, the sterile technique and procedure of this surgery was very similar to that in the United States which was cool to see. The only difference being that they wear sandals in the OR. ? After finishing in the OR, we went to get lunch and then proceeded to the alternative medicine unit where we all got Thai massages which were so amazing!! It was interesting to hear how important and highly valued the alternative medicine is in their culture. We got to hear a lot about acupuncture and see how it is done and why it is used. I have never seen or really understood the background behind acupuncture, so it was cool to get an education about that and hear patient accounts of the benefits of the treatment. After the alternative medicine unit, we returned to the college and had dinner which was rice, shrimp soup, and vegetables with pork. And watermelon which was delicious! We had our class meeting which was great to be able to share stories and process things with the group and also practice assertiveness!

---