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Bookmark & sharePituitary tumour removal › Day in the life
Surgeon Nick Thomas
Mr Nick Thomas is a consultant neurosurgeon at King's College Hospital, London. We spent some time with Nick to find out about his life outside the operating theatre.
It's Wednesday morning in south London and for Nick, patients come first. It's time for a ward round, which is key for a neurosurgeon to monitor rapid changes in the patient's condition before they become permanent problems. Nick enjoys dealing with patients and sees it as an intrinsic part of being a doctor.
'The ward round is crucial. It's our ability to find out what's going on with the patients. In a specialty where it's really quite intense, such as neurosurgery, it's important to be a good doctor before you're a good surgeon.'
During the ward round, Nick sees a 74-year-old lady who had been in a road traffic accident. He recently operated on her spine and wants to see how she is progressing. It's going to take a while to see any improvement, but Nick stresses the importance of keeping the patient's spirits as high as possible.
'It's important to always give a patient some optimism,' says Nick. 'Really it's a lot of hard work on her behalf now, and one can't crush any of her optimism.' A little later, Nick drops in to see a gentleman who been in a motorcycle accident to make sure he is comfortable in the brace he must wear to immobilise his injured spine.
Nick then goes to see a patient with a pituitary cyst impairing her vision. He attempted to operate on her recently but she experienced an unexpected reaction to the anaesthetic. Nick stresses to the patient that he cannot re-operate until he knows for sure what happened with the anaesthetic. Safety is paramount.
With the ward round complete, Nick has some time to look at some scans and prepare for next week's patients.
Nick says, 'The scan is enormously helpful in giving us detailed anatomical knowledge and allowing us to know what we are going to find at the time of the operation.'
Nick then has to get on with his paperwork, which includes going over 20-30 referrals a week. He tries to spend about an hour a day emptying his bottomless in-tray.
'It's a significant part of one's daily routine and probably an increasingly vital part of our day-to-day work, so it's something that really can't be avoided.'
It's then time for the weekly multi-disciplinary meeting to look at the latest pituitary tumour cases and discuss them with colleagues.
