Surgery in a Truck - KXNet - Bismarck/Minot/Williston/Dickinson

Surgery in a Truck

   Area doctors perform hundreds of surgeries a year.
   But today -- they're improving their surgical skills in a semi.
   Reporter Arielle Johnson brings us to the surgery.

Local physicians are training for groundbreaking surgical procedures in a Operating Room on wheels...
   Inside this truck are five operating room stations.
(Dr. Rhonda Schafer-McLean/Mid Dakota Clinic)"the direction that all of surgeries are going is towards minimally invasive options for surgery)

   The truck's cargo is cutting edge equipment that will improve how many procedures can be done.  Dr. Rhonda Schafer-McLean makes it look easy, until she let me try it out. She says it's like a video game with practice you get better....
Dr. Schafer-McLean says a surgery like a Hysterectomy 25 years ago isn't the same as it is today thanks to technology...

(DR. Rhonda Schafer-McLean/ Mid Dakota Clinic)" All of surgery has gone from being big incisions and big recoveries and lots of pain to minimally evasive surgical approach so that we minimize pain and recovery, we expedite returning to work and activities and life, and we do that in a much less painful way then we were able to before."

Mclean says you can go from little hospital stay, to no hospital stay now, and the surgery is more cosmetically appealing.

(Rhonda Schafer-McLean/Mid Dakota Clinic) "it's amazing you can take something the size of a tennis ball out and not have a scar to show for it"

She says the beauty of bringing this Covidien truck here is that it's not just limited to the doctors, everybody on the surgical team from admin staff to nurses seeing it hands on together as a team.
(Rhonda Schafer-Mclean/ Mid Dakota Clinic) "making sure were incorporating technology where its appropriate."
In Bismarck for KXNEWS. I'm Arielle Johnson

Doctors are always learning and usually traveling to conferences and clinics.
McLean says having the ability to bring this event here speaks highly of not only her facility but our area and our region.