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Inside an NHS ‘barn theatre’ with four operations done at once
Music from the Spice Girls is blaring out from speakers as the surgeon Paddy Subramanian grabs a bone saw and gets to work on Jacqueline Carby’s left knee. The 78-year-old is one of four patients being operated on side by side in the same room at an NHS hospital in north London.
Each of the four operating zones in the vast “barn theatre” is a hive of activity; with half a dozen staff in scrubs buzzing around the foot of each bed, hovering over trays holding an array of surgical tools required to perform routine knee and hip replacements. The surgeons’ soundtrack of choice — jaunty Nineties pop tunes — is punctuated only by the noise of drills, saws and of metal hammering away at bone.
The pioneering barn theatre complex at Chase Farm Hospital, part of the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust, has been designed to ensure doctors get through as many operations as possible, as quickly and safely as possible. In a week when a report by Lord Darzi criticised the lack of productivity in crumbling hospitals, it provides an example of the NHS at its most ruthlessly slick and efficient.
The large open-plan theatre equipped with cutting-edge air canopies that ensure infection cannot spread between the four beds. Compared with traditional single operating theatres it offers the crucial advantage of allowing consultant surgeons to supervise numerous operations at once.
Subramanian, a consultant orthopaedic surgeon at the hospital, said: “It is super efficient. There is no bed wasted, and no time wasted. We can do four hip replacements in the same room. One consultant can supervise two parallel operating tables. Communication and the sharing of expertise is key in surgery. Registrars [trainee surgeons] can stick their hand up and ask for help or a second opinion. It is much safer and better for patients and staff.”
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Source: The Times, 16 September 2024