Elective orthopaedics team thanked for dedication

UHNM’s elective orthopaedic theatre team have been recognised for their extraordinary dedication. The team recently completed a 16-hour shift to ensure a paediatric patient could have an improved quality of life following their procedure.

Joanne Embury, operating department practitioner, said: “After my theatre list finished I went to the hub theatres to check on my colleagues in the paediatric theatre. They were working on an extremely complex case and at 7:30pm, the end of our shift, the surgery was still not done. I checked on my colleague to find out that she had been scrubbed up since the start of the surgery at 12pm.

“I offered to scrub in so that she could go home and we gathered a team so that patient safety wasn’t compromised. The consultant paediatric surgeon operating was Ms Belen Carsi, who I have had the pleasure of working alongside for many years and during many difficult procedures. It was clear in this case that the surgery was probably the most challenging we had ever done together. The anaesthetist was Dr Prashanth Reddy, who again went above and beyond and stayed well over his allocated shift time so that his on-call colleague was free in case we received any paediatric emergencies.

“When I joined the operating table at 7:30pm Belen had been operating for a solid seven hours without any kind of comfort break due to the intricate surgery being performed. We finished operating at 11:30pm.

“Although it was such a long day we managed to correct a deformed foot and improve the patient’s quality of life massively, in fact we performed at least 12 complex procedures on this paediatric patient so that they did not have to come back to theatre multiple times.

“Ms Carsi is such an amazing surgeon and I am in awe of her skill, talent and professionalism. She is a fantastic role model for the trainee surgeons and at every step of the operation still found the energy to teach and explain what she was doing to her registrar in a safe, calm and collected manner. She is so passionate about providing a high standard of patient safety and care and goes out of her way to help any member of staff even in her own time, which is truly selfless.”

The team have been given the Chief Executive’s award.