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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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 LETTERS & E-Mails letters@outpatientsurgery.net ◗ Re: "Don't Give in to the Gadget" (June, page 16). All operating room staff should be mentally present 100% of the time during any patient encounter. If they are tweeting, texting, surfing the internet or posting "selfies," they are not paying full attention, but instead making a conscious decision that puts the patient at risk. Nurses as advocates have an ethical responsibility to stand for the well-being of the patient. This means speaking up when a patient's safety is threatened because a member of the healthcare team is pre- occupied with the score of the World Cup. Alyssa Turpin, RN Graduate Nursing Student Florida Atlantic University Boca Raton, Fla. aturpin2013@my.fau.edu Don't Text and Operate T he term "distracted doctoring" is being heard more and more frequently, but the phenome- non isn't limited to physicians. Anyone and everyone — nurses, PAs, NPs, CRNAs, OR staff, even administrators — can be held negligent, and therefore culpable, if they choose to pay more atten- tion to their electronic devices than their patients. Mobile devices are here to stay and we should be grateful. The technology is wonderful. It lets us instantly dial up a diagnosis, a drug dose or a col- league to consult with. The devices are more valu- able than can ever be measured. They give us imme- diate access to the entire world of medicine, right at our fingertips. Less wonderful, in the context of health care, is the fact that we can also pull up the ball game, menus, airfares and social media, which we can then use to gripe about having to go through anoth- er boring day in the OR. In other words, it's easy to blame the device, but the device isn't the problem. We are the problem. And our inability to control our impulses is something that plaintiffs' lawyers are itching to exploit. The people we see as patients, they see as victims and as jurors. When we jeopard- ize care or place lives in danger as a result of fool- ish, self-centered pursuits, verdicts will be swift and harsh. And rightly so. Through their eyes Put yourself in the patient's place. Recently a neuro- surgeon from Denver was the target of a malprac- tice suit stemming from multiple phone calls — both business and personal — he took via a wire- less headset while performing a procedure. The patient was left paralyzed after surgery — allegedly because the surgeon was distracted. An out-of-court Don't Give in to the Gadget Distracted doctoring is the new legal minefield. 1 6 | O U T PAT I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E | J U N E 2 014 William Landess, CRNA, MS, JD MEDICAL MALPRACTICE Pamela Bevelhymer, RN, BSN IMPULSE CONTROL Electronic devices in the OR aren't the prob- lem. The problem is our inability to control how we use them. Pain-Free Surgery ◗ Re: "Managing Post-Op Hernia Pain" (Manager's Guide to Abdominal Surgery, March, page 20). Careful attention to established techniques, along with appropriate adoption of new technologies, has certainly made it more likely for our patients to achieve a pain-free result, with a reduced reliance on opioids. I was quite surprised that there was no mention of an agent I have been using for the past year or so: Exparel (bupivacaine liposome injectable suspension). This agent is a single injection placed during the case, but allows for release of bupivacaine for up to 96 hours. After using it in more than 150 patients, the data from my patients continue to demonstrate that they have had less pain requiring fewer nar- cotics. Lawrence Biskin, MD Pittsburgh, Pa. Chairman, Hernia Committee, Society of Laparoendoscopic Surgeons lbiskin@yahoo.com OSE_1407_part1_Layout 1 7/3/14 2:00 PM Page 14