I do nursing as a job. I have been working as a nurse at the Colombo South Teaching Hospital, Kalubowila, Srilanka for three years now. In the early days of my appointment, I worked in a surgical ward for eight months. It was while working in the ward that I had the opportunity to go to the theater. There are four theaters in our section. In the theater where I work, we mainly do orthopedic surgeries. In addition we do kidney related surgery as well as Eye surgeries and OMF surgeries. I get two nights a month. We all do night duty in the main theater. Main theater is the casualty theater we have.
We start work on the theater at 7am. I leave home at 6:00 am to be on duty. Because it takes me about an hour to get to the Kalubowila Hospital from where I got the annex. My theater has about twenty nursing staff. There are also eight healthcare assistants. All of us in the theater are very supportive of our service. We do not do surgery in the theater every Sunday. At that time we also prepare the necessary items for the other surgery days. Also on Sundays a few of us go on duty at the casualty theater.
The theater has two sides for surgeries. On the one side, we only do orthopedic surgeries every day. Because orthopedic surgery is a place where a lot of sterility needs to be maintained. The other side is reserved for dental, eye and GU surgery. We start the surgery at 07:30 in the morning. We stop the surgery list at four in the afternoon. Because after four in the afternoon we have to prepare packets for the next day. In the theater we all do our duty very happily. We all do our work very cooperatively. We're all set for a duty roster for theater duty. And when our work is done, we go and help others.
Some days we get freetime. Because we do routine surgery in the theater. Because the theater list sometimes ends before 4 pm. Anastatic doctors, surgeons, medical officers, x-ray department from all over the theater. We all work very collaboratively in the theater. And the theater is where I happily do my duty.
