Suturing workshop

Instructed to wear lab coats or not participate the entire year descended on the lab for one of the more interesting components of dermatology - the suturing workshop. Not plastic prosthesis, cadavers or patients. The reason we were told, that we must wear lab coats was to prevent getting raw chicken on our clothes. Sometimes I wonder if health and safety take things a little too far, this being no exception.

To begin with, a quick demonstration courtesy of one of the best teachers I’ve seen so far. A few attempts at a simple interrupted suture and I think I got the hang of it, although I was lucky enough to get to place some in real patients during my ENT placement. With a little time to spare, we were taught how to do a more advanced vertical mattress suture. I can’t really remember what it is for, something to do with little old ladies with fragile skin. After further butchery of the chicken wing we got to play with a punch biopsy and some liquid nitrogen spray.

Vertical Mattress Suture

Due to time constraints we only had 30 minutes to do the workshop (although I decided to do it again with the next group, as a few students didn’t turn up). Earlier this week we were told it was one of the potential OSCE stations for our end of year exams. This later transpired to be inaccurate, as another one of the instructors told us the school is too cheap to purchase another hundred chicken wings to test us with.

I guess the next time we’ll get to do anything like this could be on real patients next year. Would be helpful if they could teach us how to administer local anaesthetic too…