Anaesthetics 101

This post is by Lisa and Angela, Anaesthetic nurses, Tonga.

Hi everyone,

Lisa and Angela, the anaesthetic nurses reporting in and doing our bit for the OOH blog.

We’re each on our 2nd Operation Open Heart tour of duty – I (Lisa) have been to Fiji and now Tonga, and Angela has been to Tonga twice.

We have the task of making our anaethetists look good! No seriously we had a blast working with David and Clement last week, and we’re looking forward to working with Jeff this coming week also.

So what are the highlights for us so far?

• Well meeting Ana* yesterday was pretty special. We weren’t here in 2009 when she had surgery but we had seen the pictures and heard the stories. She is literally a different person, and it was so special to see what it meant to her and her family.
• On Friday one of our patients was an 18 year old man, and you could tell he was really nervous about what was going to happen. However the trust they put in us as a team is quite amazing to be a part of.
• We’re here pretty early each morning to start preparing each day, and all the local staff in theatre get together and sing a prayer to start their day – such a nice way to begin work.

We definitely also need to say thanks to Sharon Kay and also to Tracey Nugent at Sonosite for the loan of the TOE probe equipment. It has been invaluable this week with a couple of the complex cases this week so we are really glad for your support!

Thanks for reading!!

(*name changed for privacy)