The Surgery Shelf Exam

Introduction

Some say the surgery shelf is actually a medicine shelf. I would disagree with this. The surgery shelf is really much more of a perioperative shelf. That is, it covers important topics concerning the time before surgery and the time after including diagnosis, indications, complications and post operative medical management. These topics are not medicine topics, they are those foundational to the management of a surgical patient. Most students who take the surgery shelf will not become surgeons, so to test them over the minutia of operative steps, techniques and intraoperative management is essentially a waste of time. Rather, the surgery shelf helps to solidify some key perioperative knowledge that can be used by a variety of specialties if they happen to be taking care of a surgical patient.

Topics to study early

These topics are important, universal topics that will be used daily in the management of your patients and are large topics on the surgery shelf. It is smart to study these early and move on to more service specific topics afterwards.

• fluids
• post-operative complications (Part 12 of de Virgilio)
• fever
• hypoxia
• chest pain
• neuro status change
• hypotension
• bleeding

Conclusion

This article is still in a work in progress. If you have any suggestions or corrections for this Medical Brain Wiki article, please email them to garrett.skinner@mailfence.com.