OB-GYN: Student's role in surgery

The student has an interesting role in the operating room.

1. Retracting: this is the most common thing students do. It means you take curved pieces of metal and pull them to keep the incision or where the surgeon is working open. This often means spending 2,3,4 hours and I've heard horror stories of 8-10 hours of you standing there holding retractors, slowly building lactic acid in your muscles. My worst so far was about 4 hours. But was pulling hard to keep a women's introitus (look it up if you want to know what it is, but this is gyn) as wide open as possible.

2. Suction: Sometimes we have the little suction vacuum to get blood or often the smoke from the electrosurgery which can make cuts and stop bleeds from happening by zapping the vessels. Our job is to get the smoke so it doesn't stink the place up.

3. Cutting: We often cut the sutures (surgical sewing thread) once the surgeons are done tying knots.

4. Sewing: And sometimes we even get to sew closed the skin and fat since it one of the simplest parts and harder to mess up.

An interesting job to pay med tens of thousands of dollars in tuition for. Another "rite of passage" for med students.