Spotlight on: Wayne Bowditch, Operating Department Practitioner and Resus Officer
Today (Saturday 14 May) is national Operating Department Practitioner Day, an opportunity to celebrate the ODP profession and to find out more about their roles.
ODPs support the multi-disciplinary team to help deliver perioperative care in all kinds of surgery within our hospital.
We spoke to Wayne Bowditch, Lead Resuscitation Officer and ODP, to learn more about his role.
“My role is part of the Recognise and Respond service and I, together with the team, deliver resuscitation training and education to clinical colleagues at all levels,” said Wayne.
“Alongside the team I support audit and data collection and within the hospital I attend cardiac arrest calls supporting a team of multidisciplinary healthcare professionals.
“But most importantly I support colleagues re-calibrating those crucial resuscitation skills, that have to be refreshed once a year.
“Many colleagues, in fact, do not use those skills very often; some of them, luckily, never have had to use them. However, it is very important to know what to do in a critical situation, either at the hospital or if you’re out and about and somebody needs your help.”
Wayne’s team receives around 60 to 110 emergency ‘2222 calls’ each month from various hospital’s teams and attend around 15 actual cardiac arrests per month across the hospital site.
“Sometimes we can’t attend all the cardiac arrest calls because we’re delivering training; that’s why we’re teaching colleagues how to look for the early signs of a patient becoming seriously unwell and reduce the risk of cardiac arrest,” said Wayne.
“It gives me great satisfaction to provide this type of training: it’s a privilege to be in a position to be able to support my colleagues with the necessary skills and education to enable them to have the confidence to lend support when a patient has collapsed and becomes unwell.”
Wayne trained as an ODP in 2008 at the UEA and started working in the main in-patients Operating Theatre Complex in 2010. He then progressed to become one of the Trauma & Orthopaedic Department’s Deputy Team Leaders, specialising in supporting the spinal scoliosis team as an ODP and supported basic life support training for the theatre complex.
“The ODP role can provide great career opportunities, the role and skillset of the ODP are becoming more recognised within the healthcare service and can offer so many new exciting opportunities,” added Wayne.
“When I started, the role was predominately only recognised in the operating theatres, but now ODPs work in the Critical Care Complex, Vascular Access, Resuscitation and also in management roles as it’s recognised they can bring a wide range of skills to the hospital.”
“I’d like to thank all our brilliant ODPs for the hugely important work they do across the Trust,” said Tracey Fleming, Divisional Clinical Support Director.
“As a key part of the Surgical team, they provide vital support to patients at a time when many are feeling very anxious about their surgery. Thank you to you all, you truly are amazing.”