Outpatient Surgery Magazine - Subscribers

What Will the OR of the Future Look Like? - July 2014 - Outpatient Surgery Magazine

Outpatient Surgery Magazine, providing current information on Surgical Services, Surgical Facility Administration, Outpatient Surgery News and Trends, OR Excellence and more.

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Paula Watkins, RN, CNOR BEHIND CLOSED DOORS 1 1 4 O U T P AT I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E O N L I N E | J U LY 2 0 1 4 Sis Boom Bah Every surgical team needs cheerleaders. I t's no secret that each of us on the surgical team thinks that our role in the OR is the tough- est and the most essential job. Scrub nurses and techs think that, without them, there'd be no one at the surgeon's right hand to offer assistance or pass instru- ments. Who else is doing the job? they ask. Circulators don't do anything but sit on their tuchus at the com- puter for the entire case. Circulators, on the other hand, argue that you can't possibly know what's going on outside of your little sterile world when your attention can never stray outside of it. Did you notice me crawling around the surgeon's feet? I can assure you that it wasn't some sort of worship ritual. The frequency with which they have to troubleshoot electronic equipment that was working just fine not more than 5 minutes ago leads them to believe someone's out to get them (and one of these days, we're going to find out who). Anesthesia providers do their own thing, of course, and as a group they do it rather well. Still, you'll occasionally encounter one who acts as though he's never wrapped a blood pressure cuff around a patient's arm in his entire career. It was a mild shock to me that time I saw an anesthesia provider hand a cuff to "the turnover help" and ask her to put the cuff on the patient for him. Finding your role We're called a surgical team for a reason. Just like on other teams, we have designated positions. And just like on other teams, the people in those posi- Surgical nursing is like cheerleading. We've all climbed a pyramid of stepstools to fix elevated equipment with silk tape. OSE_1408_part3_Layout 1 7/3/14 8:46 AM Page 114

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