Georgia's Elective Diary - Part 3 (Theatre Performances)

One of the great things here in Adelaide has been the low-key relaxed environment of the operating theatre. In New Zealand theatres, you’d occasionally hear the soft murmuring of a radio station playing as you work, and its typical for light hearted conversation to occur, but here in Adelaide, every theatre is equipped with iPhone speaker docks to enable every surgeon’s personalized choice of music to reverberate through the theatre.

One of the consultants didn’t provide his own music, but it was well expected of any registrar, resident or medical student to not enter his theatre without the music that he liked. What was that music you ask?

Beyoncé.

When we were in theatre with him one morning, he asked for some music, and we had limited Beyoncé between us. I started playing the limited Beyoncé I had, and “We Run This World” started playing. “Who is this?” The surgeon asked shocked. Informed that it was in fact Beyoncé, and he was again stumped. “Well,” he said, “I guess this is why all the theatre staff are so surprised that I like Beyoncé so much. I quickly bought and downloaded “Halo” for him, knowing it was his favourite.

Later in this theatre, one of the other students put his phone on the dock, and selected Imagine Dragons. He was then asked to scrub, and relinquished control of the music. Unfortunately for him, the next song to play was the (not so) aptly named “Bleeding Out”, and Charlie had to sit there for a torturous three minutes 45 seconds, in stunned horror, silently wishing to himself that the surgeon wouldn’t be listening intently enough to hear the lyrics. Lucky for him, neither the consultant, nor I picked up on this, and Charlie was eventually able to breathe again.

Another of the consultants had his own personal ‘theatre playlist’ with a vast array of easy listening, from Bastile, to Lorde, Imagine Dragons and many other great songs and artists! Along with many covers of pop songs, often with a jazzy feel to them. This playlist was epic, and there are a great number of songs and artists I’ve written down with the intention of buying for myself, I was so impressed with his music choices.

One of these favourites, is a jazz cover of Rihanna’s “Don’t Stop the Music” which I absolutely fell in love with and thought I’d share with you today.