Today was the day I have been waiting for all semester! I love cardiology and we finally got to dissect out the heart! Everyone had a task this lab: dissecting out the pleura, cleaning out the mediastinum, and my job-isolating the arteries and veins of the heart! I had to be super patient and slowly remove the fat and reveal the main arteries. Our cadaver was 93 years old but her heart looked picture perfect, like it was out of a textbook. Using the reverse scissoring technique I cleared away the fatty deposits along the LAD, PDA, marginal and circumflex. Fortunately, we were able to cut out the heart and remove it from the thoracic cavity, so that when I was clearing the fat away I could hold the heart in my hand. This made it so much easier to clear out the arteries and veins. During surgery the heart will obviously still be in the thoracic cavity which makes everything a little inconvenient. Nevertheless, its clearly possible--and I may even be performing surgery one day, who knows!
One of our instructors gives little lectures by a cadaver that he dissected so that we can learn what exactly we are looking at while each group dissects their own cadaver. He spent some extra time after class chatting with me about his experiences and what I could do as a student who was interested in cardiothoracic surgery. Hopefully, he will be able to get me into one of the surgical labs to learn some basic procedures. He said that most PA's learn surgery procedures during their job and not in PA school. However, apparently, most PAs are not interested in surgery, so maybe this will make getting a job a bit easier. I think that it would be nice for me to have learned some of these things before setting foot in a workplace.
One of our instructors gives little lectures by a cadaver that he dissected so that we can learn what exactly we are looking at while each group dissects their own cadaver. He spent some extra time after class chatting with me about his experiences and what I could do as a student who was interested in cardiothoracic surgery. Hopefully, he will be able to get me into one of the surgical labs to learn some basic procedures. He said that most PA's learn surgery procedures during their job and not in PA school. However, apparently, most PAs are not interested in surgery, so maybe this will make getting a job a bit easier. I think that it would be nice for me to have learned some of these things before setting foot in a workplace.