If a group of PA students are walking down the hall and one of the autopsy techs sticks his head out of the door to the autopsy suite and says, "Do you guys want to come see a cool case?" the answer is always going to be yes. If a resident is triaging a segment of colon so fresh that it is still peristalsing on the cutting board and invites me over to look, then I'm there.
And I'd love to be able to tell everyone about the specimens we see and everything we do, but I can't because of the social media policy. It is just the way things are. No one would want to stumble across a detailed description of their loved one's (or their own!) organ/illness/body part, so no specific details with associated dates.
I will say that the number of complex specimens that Duke North handles daily is probably about what we would have seen in two weeks where I worked before. It is a completely different environment, but really amazing about being able to ensure that each student gets a wide variety of complex specimens.
I might have mentioned before that there is a white board where each student or resident can jot down their wishlist specimens. I've got a few things written down, but I don't have much because I've had a decent sampling of different specimens during this rotation (hepatectomies, pneumonectomies, mastectomies, prostatectomies, etc). And I'm not bold enough to put whipple down on my wishlist yet, but maybe for the next rotation!
It makes me realize how much I have genuinely missed grossing during our didactic year. I love cutting things up into uniform 2-3 mm slices and laying them out (prostatectomies and thyroidectomies are awesome for that). And it is always nice when a passing staff PA glances over at my sections and compliments them.
In completely unrelated news, our first years had their first Molecules and Cells exam today (I hope they all did well!). I can't believe that it was only this time last year that we were in their shoes...
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