Mobile surgical bus open day
At the heart of the unit is a spacious and modern operating theatre. Photo: supplied
The mobile surgical services bus is having an open day for interested members of the public and school groups.
On Friday 7 October from 9.30am-12.30pm and 2.30-4.00pm, the bus will be at Golden Bay Community Hospital.
The bus is a self-contained day surgery centre. It is 20 metres long and weighs over 39 tonnes.At the heart of the unit is a spacious and modern operating theatre, but it also includes a patient waiting area, surgical scrub room, recovery room, sterilising area and kitchen/staff area.
The bus travels through rural New Zealand on a five-week cycle, conducting over 1600 elective day surgery procedures each year. Although the unit is capable of more complex surgery, the bus focuses on low risk, elective, day surgery. Over 300 different types of procedure may be performed on the bus by surgeons from a wide range of specialities.
Isolated communities have access to elective surgery in their local community eliminating the need to travel many hours to large metropolitan hospitals. Specialities undertaken at Takaka include general surgery, orthopaedics, dental, endoscopy and urology.
“Since 2006 we have completed 200 operations in Takaka,” said Angela Desborough, relationship manager for Mobile Surgical Services. “We’ve done 13,000 operations and 30,000 hours of rural health professional development in rural New Zealand. Patients are treated close to home, and rural health professionals are supported through a range of education and training. Strong community partnerships are the key to our success.”
To have a procedure performed on the “bus”, patients first need to be referred by a GP to a specialist. The specialist will then determine the best treatment, which may include putting the patient on the DHB waiting list for an elective procedure. Patients are selected to be operated on in the surgical bus based on clinical priority of the patient on the waiting list. Low-risk day surgery is completed on the bus, so if a patient has other medical conditions then they may require their surgery in a base hospital.
