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BEHIND CLOSED DOORS
Paula Watkins, RN, CNOR
If Anything Can Go Wrong …
Do they teach Murphy's Law in med school?
Sometimes getting a surgical team together for a case is like herding squirrels. You could call it a comedy of errors, but it's not funny. Well, maybe it is funny … later. I'm almost ready to laugh about this recent incident.
Hurry up and wait
The surgeon is 15 minutes late. OK, we'll roll with it. Nurses and techs always shoulder the blame for turnover times, so documenting that it was someone else's fault is a welcome occurrence.
When the surgeon arrives, though, we discover that the vendor's rep hasn't. A phone call is made. The rep's schedule says the case was supposed to begin an hour later than we'd booked it. Really? Now our schedule is
taking its marching orders from the vendor? Whatever.
The CRNA is sent to lunch. In fact, the OR manager sends everyone to lunch. See you in 30.
After lunch we return to the OR and, happily, the rep has shown up. Great, let's go. Wait, where's the radiology tech? The department that's in charge of imaging often seems like it can't visualize the schedule. We call them and it's a surprise. It'll be another 20 minutes before the tech gets to surgery, changes into scrubs and sets up the C-arm.
We notify anesthesia that we're just about ready. The CRNA didn't get to leave for lunch until 15 minutes ago. So we dog the anesthesiologist supervising our OR until, exasperated, he agrees to cover for the CRNA till he gets back.
At this point we're going on 2 hours late. Things are looking up, though. We have the patient in the room, on the table, and connected to all the
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GOT THE TIME? Anyone interested in doing a little surgery today?
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