compromising position

i'm on my anesthesia rotation and thank god i showed up today cause i was assigned to the program director's room. he cares if i show up, and he actually teaches. anyway, i'm at a small, community hospital. patient rights seem even less protected here than at the university.

i watched a TURP today (trans urethral resection of the prostate). we did it with spinal anesthesia. you put numbing medicine into the space that holds the spinal cord and it numbs everything below where you put the needle in. the patient is awake for the whole thing, but can't feel anything.

i was shocked at the conversation that happened in the OR. the surgeon was talking about the white sox game and his kid's soccer game and lunch and all of this random stuff. meanwhile the patient is laying there, awake, with a camera up his penis and 5 people standing behind the table watching. his english wasn't great either...he only really spoke italian. and this is why i'm not going to be a good doctor, because i was sitting there thinking about how that patient must be feeling. i wasn't paying attention the the monitors or any of that. instead i was obsessing over how incredibly unprofessional it is to completely ignore the person whose penis you have scoped and whose prostate you're removing. it just makes him feel like crap. how much more vulnerable can you get than naked on a table with 5 people hovered around you all attention on your penis?

there is a better way to do this. it's called being sensitive to how the guy is feeling. stop talking about your family and your appetite for 40 minutes (how long the operation took) and focus on the procedure. for the love.