Non-emergency surgeries will be performed at the Thompson General Hospital once again starting March 9 now that construction on the three operating rooms damaged by water last June is complete.
“Next week we’ll have our housekeeping staff come and do a terminal clean so the whole place will get sanitized,” said Northern Regional Health Authority (NRHA) executive director of clinical services in Thompson and area Craig Hillier Feb. 28. “The equipment and supplies and everything will get moved in over that same time period next week and then the morning of March 9 we’ll start doing surgeries in the renovated space. It might take a couple of weeks to build up to our previous capacity with scheduling and moving things around but March 9 is the date that patients will start coming back to this OR.”
The new operating theatres have been upgraded with easier-to-clean walls, stainless steel cabinets and sinks and LED lighting.
“The standards have improved,” said NRHA chief nursing officer Shannon Guerriero. “It’s like any kind of building code where standards go up as the years go by. We took this lemon and we made lemonade. We had this unfortunate flood but we were able to improve a number of standards and building code things because of the rebuild.”
The final construction tasks were completed Feb. 27, said Susan Gerlach, who oversaw the reconstruction project.
“We just had someone finishing up the doors yesterday. There’s been construction in there. You can imagine if it was your house you can give it a wipe down, you’re good to go. In an OR you’ll be wiping that three and four times and then we have to move supplies in and it becomes a restricted area.”
The three renovated operating theatres include two larger ones and a smaller one that can be used for endoscopy procedures or dental surgeries.
“We’re waiting for everything to be cleaned and then we’ll move in the anesthetic machine, the OR table, all the basins and that kind of thing,” said clinical resource nurse Ashley Steven.
The new operating rooms offer better infection control than the ones they replaced, which had wooden doors, wooden cabinetry and porcelain sinks. The walls are now whiterock, which is easy to clean, while the cabinets and sinks are stainless steel.
“Everything here is non-porous and its wipeable,” said Gerlach. “You can clean all of this and wipe it down and nothing’s sucking up a bacteria or anything.”
One general surgeon and one ear, nose and throat (ENT) surgeon are based in Thompson, along with obstetrician-gynecologists, but there is no longer a Thompson-based anesthetist.
“We used to have one but she’s since resigned,” said Hillier. “Luckily we have a really good group of returning itinerant anesthesiologists. They come from the city, they provide services for us here and then they go back and somebody else comes. We have a good core group of itinerant surgeons that come and do surgeries."
Procedures performed at Thompson general hospital include scopes, which don't require anesthesia, abdominal surgeries such as appendix and gall bladder removals, ENT surgeries, dental surgeries, hernia repairs and some minor orthopedic surgeries.
“We don’t do joint replacements,” said Hillier.
There are 9.5 operating room nurse positions in Thompson. Those nurses had the chance to upgrade their education while the hospital was limited to emergency surgeries only.
“They're all going to be part of the Association of Operating Room Nurses, which is just a higher level of education that the nurses didn’t have the opportunity to take before,” said Guerriero.
The hospital can perform 12 to 16 scope procedures in a day and usually has two operating rooms in use from Monday to Friday, depending upon doctor availability. Only emergency surgeries are performed on weekends.
“Depending on emergencies, it could be up to 200 [surgeries] in a month,” Steven says.
The metal doors on the operating theatres had to be cut and built to fit specific spaces and manufactured at the beginning of a set when the manufacturing facility was cleaner, said Hillier.
Gerlach said the cost of the renovations was likely more than a million dollars. New lighting alone cost nearly $40,000.
Once the rebuilt operating rooms are ready, the one operating theatre that remained usable since last June will be upgraded with whiterock walls.
“We’’ll end up with four ORs that should last us quite some time,” said Hillier. “We’re so excited to have this project done and ready to go so that we can start seeing our patients here again.”
