This past Wednesday, March 22, my Fundamentals of Biomedical Sciences (II) class was visited by Mr. Edmondson, a PA from local hospital, Springhill Medical Center. Mr. Edmondson works in the Springhill Emergency Room where he sees a wide variety of patients everyday. In some cases, these patients come in with wounds that require some form of artificial wound closing agent to speed along the healing process. These artificial agents include various types of sutures, glue, staples, and more.
After a quick demonstration with the help of his daughter, Kat, Mr. Edmondson allowed each of us to attempt a simple stitch with sutures on a pad provided for us. We used non-absorbable sutures and various tools to practice this technique. These tools included needle holders, forceps, and suturing scissors. This did take some practice, but after a couple tries this process came to be much easier and quite fun (though I’m sure it would be quite different to perform on a living human)! Because we used non-absorbable sutures, we did learn how to remove them as well. I would love to learn more about different types of stitches and even try them soon.
Different wounds require different types of stitches/artificial wound closing agents. For example, wounds in which the sides of the skin around the wound lay down flat near each other, will often only require glue to be closed. Bigger and more gaping wounds in extremities or less sensitive parts of the body may only require staples. Some wounds, such as those to the face, are in more sensitive areas that require more attention to detail to limit scarring; these wounds require sutures. Sutures themselves come in various sizes and types for different areas of the body as well. Mr. Edmondson did tell us a story about a man who got cut by a chainsaw in the head, but chose to have staples to close the wound because he wanted a cool scar!
This presentation was fun and fascinating. This truly solidified my interest in the field of Emergency Medicine, and I hope Mr Edmondson may come back to teach us more techniques!
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