Suturing

I love suturing. The opportunity doesn’t come up every day, or every week, and you have to really put yourself forward because I think the doctors really enjoy suturing too.

I’m getting to the stage now that when I see somebody come to the clinic or hospital bleeding, I will hover in the general area ... maybe I will introduce myself, assess the wound, set up the local anaesthetic ... and hover some more.

And then when the real doctor appears in between doing other very important tasks, I will be conveniently nearby with my rapport that I prepared earlier. The patient will ask, “so are you going to sew me up?” and I will look up at the doctor who will shrug and say, “if you like”.

And that’s how it happens.

I got to suture a 10cm laceration on a man’s arm last week because I hovered in the right place. I gave him 14 sutures – be probably needed 8 or 9, but it looked beautiful and he said he’d recommend me to anyone. I hope he recommends for the doctors to let me have a go, because the next day I got as far as injecting local anaesthetic into a boy’s thumb before the doctor whipped out the suture kit and sutured it all for me.