Day 9: Goats gave their lives for this.

So pretty slow on Saturdays here. Just a skeleton crew to do all the work, no "consultant surgeons" -- or in Americanese: "attendings" -- show up for work, usually. I came on in to figure out how things work on the weekend and to see if I could help. The only thing really going on was a simulation lab on thoracic surgery that was being put on by Dr. Tom Daniels from UVa. He has been involved in the thoracic surgery boot camp, so he put the surgical residents through the paces. They performed five procedures on the viscera from some freshly-killed goat from the local abattoir.

Here two residents are practicing performing a Nissen fundoplication. This is made a little more difficult  by the fact that the residents also need to pick the correct stomach fundus; goats have four of them. Usually Dr. Daniels does these sims with pigs in the United States, but pork is hard to come by here and thus is expensive.

Plus: goat brochettes afterward.