Journal # 5- Nothing exciting...

When you are thinking about having surgery what is something that you as a patient look for: Credentials for your surgeon? Location? Where the surgery will take place? How about a small building connected to houses, how does that sound to you?

When we were in Ireland this last weekend we noticed something rather strange. On the outskirts of Dublin in a town called Blanchardstown we started to see on strands of houses that were connected random houses that had signs that said SURGERY. That’s it, just SURGERY. And we began to notice some of them would be lit up, like vacancy signs. This concerned me very much because in reality why would you go to a small office in a residential area surrounded by houses? Are these surgery offices licensed? As a nursing student, soon to be nurse, the sanitary conditions are also something that concerns me. Being in an area like that there is only so much that you can control because if you are needing a sterile environment and you are surrounded by houses and someone happens to walk into the wrong house, oops there goes your sterile room!

All of us on the trip talked about them every time we passed by because we found it very odd because we don’t have things like that in the states. We have small surgery centers but they are like little hospitals and they are not placed in the middle of residential areas in between two houses! The fact that they are in those places while yes they are accessible to the general public makes me question how good they are and how clean they are. “They just seem like back alley places where people would go to get cheap surgeries the government won’t pay for with a coat hanger”- Melissa Gase

I wonder if when the light was on the SURGERY signs that meant you could walk in and get surgery and if it was off that meant there was someone on the table at the moment so you had to wait till they mopped up the blood….Hey mom and dad why don’t I just go back and get my surgery done there! Good idea right!? Not!

There were plenty of things that went wrong while we were in Ireland but at least none of us got injured and had to actually find out what those surgery centers were all about. I tried really hard to get a good picture of one but every time we were coming home on the bus there was either a child screaming or we were sleeping on our 45 min bus ride so I missed the good ones all 4 times, sorry I know everyone would love to have a good picture of this great mental image I drew in your head, maybe next time.