I’ve had quite a few surgical procedures over the years but one always sticks in my mind. The 7am arrival to hospital, the injustice of being deprived a morning coffee in the name of “fasting”, the apprehension as I lay on the operating table waiting for it to begin. It was my second spinal operation in a few months, because the surgical team had operated on the wrong part of my spine the first time around. As you can imagine, my nerves were frayed.

Even under normal circumstances there’s a gravity to surgery for patients. It can be one of the most serious and important things to happen in your lifetime. It’s also the most vulnerable you can get as a patient, trusting a group of strangers to sedate you and alter or remove parts of your body, hoping you’ll end up better off than you were before. I spent the next couple of years healing from that first surgical error through rest, rehabilitation and a lot of engagement with medical and allied health services. In my downtime, I decided to apply for medical school to see what I might contribute as a doctor.

Fast forward a few years to medical school and I found myself wandering into an operating theatre, apprehensive for a different reason: this would be my first time assisting with surgery. My previous experience had ingrained a deep suspicion of surgeons – I was determined to speak up if I saw anything inappropriate.

I watched the first patient being wheeled into theatre and joined the anaesthetist as they had a quick chat. “Why do we keep patients fasted?” he asked, once we were out of the patient’s earshot. “So they don’t regurgitate mid-procedure and start inhaling their stomach contents?” I replied. I didn’t convey my long-held position that some of us might prefer to risk asphyxiation if it meant turning up to hospital happily caffeinated.

I watched the patient walk over to the operating table clutching the back of their hospital gown closed. I smiled warmly behind my mask but they didn’t notice. A few minutes later they were unconscious, their heart rate beeping away on a small screen as the ventilator heaved lazily.

I was on edge, primed to sweat my way through a high-stakes procedure, so what came next surprised me. Once the patient was sedated, a certain levity enveloped the room. Which isn’t to say people were unfocused or unprofessional, just that more familiar workplace dynamics emerged. Someone put on music, colleagues chatted about personal news, people came and went for various reasons and there was a coffee run among staff who weren’t scrubbed in.

The shift was unexpected. I’d always assumed the day that changed my life so profoundly had been epic for everyone else as well. That the gravity of surgery was a shared experience extending from the patient to the treating team. But, over the course of that first day in theatre, I realised that a single operation is unlikely to be the most important thing to happen in a surgical team member’s lifetime because of the sheer volume of procedures they undertake.

The more I experienced theatres from the other side, the more I realised how similar they were to any other workplace. Certainly, the work was high-stakes, and casual collegiality could quickly shift to heart-thumping action to pre-empt or respond to an emergency. And there have been instances of inappropriate or negligent behaviour in surgical settings, my previous experience being a case in point. But those are the exception rather than the rule.

By the end of that first surgical rotation, I realised people should be able to balance serious work and enjoyable engagement with their colleagues. In fact, positive workplace dynamics often translate into better performance. I also realised there are some lovely surgeons and theatre nurses out there. It’s always useful to glimpse the human face behind a life-changing experience.