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O R S A F E T Y
Watch Your Step
Protect your surgeons and staff from slips, trips and
falls in the OR.
Dan O'Connor | Editor-in-Chief
The C-arm's electrical cord was bridge-cable thick, yet it was easy to miss in the dark and crowded operating room. Too bulky to lie flat, it curled and kinked, rising just high enough to catch the foot of Susan Schuldt, RN, MS, CNOR, as she dashed toward the door to get a sterile drape from the supply room down the hall. Ms. Schuldt tripped over the cord and fell hard to the black OR floor on her out-
stretched hands. She fractured both radial heads, suffered a hairline wrist fracture and opened a nasty gash on her forehead. "Had I hit my head a little differently," she says, "I would have fractured my jaw."
She missed only 3 days of work, but doctors wouldn't let her drive for 6 weeks; the hospital paid for a taxi service to take her to and from work, 30 miles each way. When she returned to duty at Onslow Memorial Hospital in Jacksonville, N.C., she couldn't work in the OR because she had a 1-pound
Instapoll:
Have slips, trips or falls injured your OR personnel?
• Yes, a serious injury
25%
• Yes, a minor injury
35%
• No 40%
Outpatient Surgery Magazine InstaPoll, April 2014, n=379