#suturing

vet school // 05.22

If you mean medic like paramedic they’re not going to do that in the field, but they might do it in an ED depending on the area and their training.

If they (or a doctor) was doing this in an ED, they’d give pain medicine, clean the wound, then give local anesthetic before the actual stitching/suturing part. The person should not be in pain, and if they are, they’d be given more or a different kind of local anesthetic to numb the area, and possibly an anti-anxiety medication to decrease fear around the wound getting repaired.

If it’s too big of an area (like massive gashes or something) to suture in an ED, they’d take them to an OR and do it under twilight or general anesthesia- this could also include surgeries to repair organs or other structures under the gashes if necessary. 

If you’re talking about in the field, they likely would not suture. If its a surface/”flesh” wound, meaning it does not involve any organs or bones, suturing is mostly to decrease the amount of scar tissue that forms. Generally it would be safer and easier just to pack the wound.

That’s Going To Leave A Mark

No.13 “This is gonna suck”

Whumpee and caretaker are stuck in a cheap motel, an oversized sweater covering Whumpee’s bloody side. Caretaker checks their bag, they have the suturing kit and enough bandages but what’s left of the painkillers is a damp spot in the bag and a few bits of broken glass. Whumpee watches Caretaker, quietly gasping ansd moaning as the patch of blood grew larger. Caretaker can’t say ‘I’m sorry’ enough. Whumpee give them a strained smile.

vet-and-wild here.

We were given suture pads for practice. They’re these square squishy things that have a layer of “skin” and a “subcutaneous layer”.

GV here.

We got to practice suturing during the suture lab in our small animal surgery course. That was about it for us. We used the suture pads that vet-and-wild refers to, but only for those couple of hours during the instruction period. The week after that we had to demonstrate that we had learned them, but other than the straight technique we learned and demonstrated in that one class period, the actual *practicing* occurred on our surgical patients and anything that we got to help suture during rotations such as lacerations, spays/neuters, and sometimes if an animal was very stable and had a fairly “routine” surgery we would be allowed to suture them up after the surgeons were done with the surgery.

Sueanoi here.

We made our own practice board from wood, gauze and tape. Here’s a picture of mine.

The purple spot represents an orifice to practice a purse-string suture on,

Ferox here,

Christmas eve🎄