The Daily Schedule Of A Laparoscopic Surgeon 

A laparoscopic surgeon performs elective surgeries since minimally invasive procedures aren't ideal at this time for performing emergency procedures. The latter is still being researched for gastrointestinal surgeries. 

The specialist will consult with their post-operative patients on a daily basis and they tend to be discharged home relatively quickly due to the benefits of laparoscopic procedures. 

The office of the laparoscopic surgeon is situated in the hospital so that they can attend to any patients in the casualty department or hospital ward. These specialists will also provide on call services for the hospital during after hours and on weekends as part of the call roster for general surgeons. This means that they will also consult with emergency cases during this time period, but they will be more specialised to perform minimally invasive procedures in cases that aren't too emergent.

Monday 

This is usually an administrative day where tasks such as confirming and attending hospital meetings with staff and management occurs. The specialist will also confirm their surgical lists for the week and attend to other clinical and non-clinical administrative issues before they start consulting with patients.

The laparoscopic surgeon will consult with patients for the rest of the day and some may be managed conservatively before surgery is offered as a treatment option, and other patients will be sent for further investigations which will be followed up and feedback will be given to them. The specialist may decide to admit a patient for further management or schedule them for an elective procedure at a later date.

Tuesday

The laparoscopic surgeon will spend this day in theatre operating on patients. The most common laparoscopic procedure performed by these surgeons is a laparoscopic cholecystectomy, and they can perform 8-12 of these procedures every week. Other common laparoscopic procedures include a laparoscopic appendectomy and colectomy. 

Any emergency conditions of the gallbladder, appendix and colon needing surgical intervention would need to be done via a laparotomy since performing these procedures laparoscopically will put the patient in danger.

Wednesday

The surgeon will continue consulting with patients in the morning and performing laparoscopic procedures in the afternoon in the operating room.

The afternoon would also be used to perform other tasks such as filling in chronic prescriptions for patients, filling in motivation letters to medical aid companies to get authorization for certain procedures to be done (these insurance companies are notorious for not authorizing laparoscopic procedures when they can be done via open surgeries) and doing further research for the surgeons own academic requirements.

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Thursday

The surgeon will spend the morning operating on patients and the afternoon will be used for training of undergraduate medical students and postgraduate surgical residents.

Friday

The surgeon will attend to patients in their office for the morning and will reserve the afternoon for resolving any unfinished administrative duties. This will include confirming the surgical list for the following week.

Once the specialist has dealt with all these aspects, they can then finish up their work week.