Outpatient Surgery Magazine

Did Skin Prep Fuel This Fire? - February 2017 - Subscribe to Outpatient Surgery Magazine

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

Issue link: http://outpatientsurgery.uberflip.com/i/782943

Contents of this Issue

Navigation

Page 146 of 146

staff lounge was filled with a heavy yellow haze. It was nothing for a scrub nurse to run into the lounge to quickly "hot box" a cigarette with her bloody gloves still on. • Corrections. While I was learning to scrub and assist, it was per- fectly acceptable for surgeons to correct you by rapping your knuck- les with an instrument or a hand, or by screaming at you in dangerous decibels. A surgeon once reached across the patient, grabbed my upper arms, shook me and yelled, "If this patient dies, it will be all your fault." He responded to the tears welling up in my eyes with, "And don't get your tears in my sterile field." Thankfully, we don't tol- erate such boorish behavior today. • Charting by hand. Remember charting implants and putting sticker labels in 4 different places? And all those logs and binders? I'm not sure how much things have really changed, though. If you're charting elec- tronically, wouldn't you think putting implant information in the patient's EMR would populate all the other places you need to docu- ment the implant? • Nurses teaching the new grads the ropes. And sometimes hang- ing them with those ropes. Once while I was setting up for a D&C, a nurse dressed me down like I was an errant child. To this day, even though it's as easy as pie, I can set up for a D&C surgery with my eyes closed. The teachers of the OR in the good ol' days taught you with blind conviction. And until you proved yourself to her and all the other members of the old guard, your place in the OR wasn't secure. Good ol' days? We've come a long way, that's for sure. I'm just not certain how much progress we've made. OSM Ms. Watkins (pwatkins12@comcast.net) has proudly been an OR nurse since 1979. J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 7 • O U T PA T I E N TS U R G E R Y. N E T • 1 4 7

Articles in this issue

Links on this page

Archives of this issue

view archives of Outpatient Surgery Magazine - Did Skin Prep Fuel This Fire? - February 2017 - Subscribe to Outpatient Surgery Magazine