• The surgeon who overreaches. You know the type. He schedules more into
his block time than he could reasonably expect to accomplish in 8
hours. There's not much a positive-thinking nurse can do about this
(other than serving his patients a full breakfast in pre-op), but you can
avoid setting yourself up for annoyance. It's easier to deal with if you
face the fact that you're going to get overtime whenever he's on site,
and if you make his block days the one day of the week you don't
schedule anything after your shift. Then get to work, and help him be as
efficient as possible.
• Team members who try your patience. The scrub tech is bossy. He's territo-
rial. He thinks he knows everything and he throws you under the bus
every chance he gets. So kill him with kindness. Let your antagonism
go for a few weeks. Watch how he works. Anticipate what he's going
to ask for and get ready to flip it onto the field. In the long run, it'll be
worth it. You won't be chasing after items the tech really should've
taken care of as often. You'll learn some good setup habits. You might
even make a new friend, and in the OR, you need all the friends you
can get.
• Dealing with other departments. I respect the ICU, the ER, the lab and the
floor nurses, but if we in surgery could handle patients without their
support, I'm pretty sure we could go through life without ever talking
to anyone else in our facilities. Other departments never seem that
keen on us either. One time a case required a call to ICU, where the
rude nurse hung up on me. I begged my colleagues to call her onto
our carpet so I could make her cry, but then I asked myself, did I real-
ly want to be the reason for someone else's bad day? I let it go. For
me, that was a good day. By the following Monday, I'd forgotten her
name.
OSM
Ms. Watkins can be reached at pwatkins12@comcast.net.
J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 6 • O U T PA T I E N TS U R G E R Y. N E T • 1 5 3
