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Siemens training at the National Cardio Surgery Center

February 26th, 2012

For a week I worked at the National Cardiosurgery Center where Siemens conducted training for surgeons. I have already interpreted a similar training in Karaganda last year so I knew what to expect this time.

Training was dedicated to the special system and its applications that are used in such medical examinations as electrophysiology and hemodynamics. We started with the general information about the application, with the ways of registering a patient in the system database, with different ways of measuring pressure in heart chambers and vessels, so in the beginning my translation was more IT related. However, when we  moved onto more specific questions such as catheter pullback sequence, translation became very specific in terms of medical vocabulary – atrium, ventricle, shunt, mitral valve,  superior vena cava, end diastolic pressure, etc.

The training was “hands-on”, i.e. hands on the patient, doctors were performing their usual daily procedures while learning about the possibilities of the programme. Over this week I have seen about 15 operations and now feel like a cardiosurgeon  myself 🙂 I have definitely learnt a lot about heart and the way it functions. I should say I am really impressed by the work that the doctors do every day.  Many of them are very young and yet so professional, you could trust them with your life and heart without any doubts!

Translator in Karaganda: Siemens training for doctors

October 12th, 2011

On October, 3-5 I was in Karaganda and provided interpreter services in the regional cardio surgery center where Siemens experts held a training for doctors – cardio surgeons. Two days before the assignment I was given a 720 pages book where I found terms like ECG waveform, ablation, hemodynamics, NBP (non-invasive blood pressure), and others.

First day started at 6am when I met with Siemens experts who would be conducting the training and we started our 3 hours car drive to Karaganda. At 9 am we entered the cardio center and met doctors, all of us were given gowns and shoe covers which was a reason for some laughs and we started our training. Our main focus is the equipment for electrophysiological studies, a so-called Sensis. Doctors in the center have worked with the equipment for a year so they were more than just familiar with it, still they had some questions and problems to be solved. Which is exactly what we came here for.

Once I got my head around all the curves and leads that exist in EP – electrophysiology, I felt much better then when I first heard about the upcoming translation- a mix of medical and technical translation, which is quite something, I should tell. But… it’s never time to relax because next day it turned out I would be interpreting during the operation. ‘’Oh my god!”, I said to myself and “yes, no problem” – to the experts. I’ve been in different places because of my job but never in the operation room where –what a surprise!- a person is being operated on.

First come the nurses, they prepare a patient for the operation, next one is the anesthesiologist, then the doctor, then us. Operation starts and lasts for more than 2 hours. I will skip the details but the main goal of the operation is to introduce catheters into the patient’s heart, to find a part of the tissue that instead of being an isolator conducts heart’s signals and to burn- “ablade” that part. By the end of those 2 hours everybody is tired but –just like in a movie- the surgeon is smiling and saying “Operation was successful”, then we all smile and go for a coffee. The training goes on.

Next day was the last day of the training and I am already on my way back home because my next assignment awaits me in Astana on the following day. It was a really good trip, I learned a lot and met nice people and now I am looking forward to the next training which hopefully will take place in Astana in December.