Medical Monday; Cutting Crew (Excision of a lesion from a robot's inner thigh)

Time for another Medical Monday! Today, a fake wound for one of the robots, for a surgical course.

So, on to another simulated surgical procedure. This time, removing a cyst. 

We do this quite often as a practice procedure up in the Lab, where we use slabs of belly pork. Now, we can't do this with the robots, because we try not to combine mucky meat with our nice clean machines.

We also can't have people cutting up the robots for real, because they cost more than a terraced house. In the past we've done this with fake scalpels, but last year I did a skin belt with a bump inside which could strap-on to Sim Man's inner thigh. It was a lump of hot-glue, with a bit of fake blood, sealed inside a kind of pocket of fake skin.

This year, for added realism, I decided to hook it up to a syringe driver to pump fake blood into it. And because I'm a bit of a sneaky bastard, I decided not to warn the surgeons either.

The pump was concealed under the trolley at the back, and the Nurse-Plant quietly triggered it. And then, the surgeons took a little longer than anticipated to get to the cutting. The pocket had been quietly filling-up like a pool toy hooked up to a pump...

To say it caught the trainees by surprise, would be an understatement. The plan had been for a dribble of blood, not "Oh Hell We've Hit An Artery, Sound The Major Haemorrhage Protocol!"

It continued to bleed all the way through the scenario, which did add to the realism, the team having to patch him up. It went down well with the faculty, who I'd also not warned.

And that's what it's all about. Next year, I'll have another go at upping the realism.