Jacque Janssen, arts/features editor
University Daily Kansan / Thursday, March 3, 1988
11
Science
Scalpels, cameras operating in unison
Med Center photographers shoot surgery
Rv James Buckman
Kansan staff writer
Bright lights glare. The photographer works quickly to get just the right picture of the subject, knowing she doesn't have a lot of time. Several masked faces watch, waiting for the photographer to finish so they can work.
Satisfied that the job is done, the photographer backs off. Doctors in green masks descend upon the subject.
Elisa Monroe, a photographer in the department of audio visual services at the University of Kansas Medical Center, has just finished her first day of photographing surgery at the Med Center. Surgery is just a small part of what the five photographers at audio visual services photograph. They document procedures at the hospital to aid in education.
research and promotion. This includes shooting everything from microscopic slides and X-ray images to child abuse cases and patients' progress.
Back inside the operating room,
doctors repair Monroe's subject,
and are given a new hearing aid.
Afterward, Monroe looks relaxed while talking with Stephan Spector, chief of the Med Center's photography division. Monroe confesses that she was a little nervous.
Monroe's photographs eventually could be used by the surgeon to help him teach class or could be published in a scientific journal.
"I asked Stephan about it, and he said he always was a little nervous," she said. "You never know what you are going to get into."
Spector, who graduated from the University of Kansas in 1980, said that his staff took pictures of everything doctors were involved with and that the procedure was one of the easiest jobs his staff did.
"We will shoot whatever they are working on, whether it's a spine or a brain or some other organ," he said.
John Weigel, a urologist at the Med Center, said he used the phi laparoscopy in his practice.
"If we get something unusual, we like to get a shot of it in OR," he said.
He said he used the photos for patients' charts and for documenting certain cases to help counter lawsuits. He said that residents also used the photos as teaching material later in their careers.
John Kennison, another photographer in the unit, said that photographing surgery could be unpredictable.
Sometimes, you get up there and
things will go radically wrong while you are standing around waiting," he said.
"At times, they will want you to go ahead and get the shot. If it is really a problem, they will just call it off right there," he said. "You don't ever know exactly what you are going to walk into. You just kind of have to be a boy scout."
"The operation may be very standard, everything is going well and everything is upbeat," he said. "At other times, it may be very tense. They may be close to a code blue. What's supposed to be a routine operation has turned a little crazy.
Noel Klein, also one of the division's photographers, said the staff's photographers needed to be able to sense the mood in the surgery suite.
"You just have to watch your step then."
Kennison said that getting the right shot sometimes took ingenuity
"I've sometimes shot way down inside the chest cavity. You have to improvise," he said. "I've stood on stools. I've stacked up little risers before and have stood right in front of the anesthesiologist and just kind of leaned right over the edge."
Although the subject matter probably is not for the weak-stomached, none of the photographers are bothered by the graphic nature of the task.
Spector said, "I thought it would be real tough. Really, you can't see that it's a person because they are draped. All you see is the area.
"It's a lot easier for me to shoot a surgery than a car wreck. In surgery, it's usually something positive. It's healing. The first few times I did it, it was really cool and dazzling. Like anything else, you get
used to it."
The photographers are required to wear scrubs and aren't allowed to touch anything in the sterile fields draped in blue, including the surgeons.
Spector said the most difficult thing to do was document child abuse cases. He said that most often, the cases involved only a bruise but that other times, they involved sexual abuse or even gun-shot wounds.
Klein said that even though they dealt with painful situations common to a hospital, it was exciting to witness the healing process.
"Before scoliosis, the patient is all bent out of shape." he said. "They come in afterward, we photograph them for their progress reports, and we see them cured."
Right: Elissa Monroe takes a picture during a hernia operation. Monroe is the newest of five photographers in the department of audio visual services at the University of Kansas Medical Center. Top left: Stephan Spector, chief of the Med Center's photography division, explains how to photograph over a doctor's shoulder without touching anything in the sterile fields. Middle left: Doctors perform a hernia operation, assisted by two nurses. The doctors tell the photographer when it is a good time to take a picture. Above: Spector heads back to audio visual services after he and Monroe have finished photographing the operation. Right: Monroe copies slides the doctors will use to instruct medical students. Photos by Ruth Jacobson/KANSAN