Orientation at OWMC

I had my orientation in Ottawa yesterday, so I thought I'd share my experience for others just waiting.

It was 2 hours long, about 30 people in the class (removing the people who were obviously support people).  The presentation was all about the surgery, side effects, long-term lifestyle changes to expect afterwards, things to start changing now etc. At the end, we had to sign a sheet to indicate whether or not we were interested in still proceeding.

The next step after orientation will be an intake appointment.  This is booked within 3-6 months with a Nurse Practitioner and will cover things like criteria for surgery, goals, health status etc.  I believe we will be mailed a blood req form to get blood work done before this meeting.  If the NP sees anything out of the ordinary in the BW, then she will get us started on correcting these anomalies (ie., getting us on supplements to correct vitamin deficiencies).  Assuming there are no glaring problems at this point, then we'll be recommended for the next set of appts.

Other tidbits:

I waited from Jan 12 to Apr 20 to get to the orientation.  They do orientations every Monday (alternating between surgical patients and medical pts, so technically every other monday is a new group of potential surgical pts)

They do 3 surgeries/day in Ottawa, except on Tuesdays, so 12/week (Mon - Fri).

Each surgery is ~2 - 2.5 hours long

After the intake appointment with the NP, expect about 12 - 16 months to surgery

I also confirmed that Kingston is in fact looking for a bariatric surgeon right now to eventually do surgeries there, which should ease the workload in Ottawa a bit, however, Kingston does do pre-op appointments (just not surgeries) so Ottawa's pre-op process will not likely get much faster.

So that's what I learned, hopefully it's helpful to someone else.

Hi! 

Thanks for the update. I was thinking about you on Monday and hoped you had an informative session. They do mail the req for blood work. They do it early too. I had mine a couple weeks after my orientation and my intake isn't until May 12. 

That's good to know!

How/when did they inform you of your intake session? Was it another letter in the mail? A phone call?  I think I recall you getting your intake appointment and BW requisition at the same time right?