Attitude of the Or.....

[mother/babyRN, RN]

i know most of you do your own sections and we do the majority, but don't have enough staff to scrub...so, consequently, the or has to come in...since we recover, pacu doesn't have to come in quite as often unless we are swamped or if the pt had general...our or people are really rude..i give them the benefit of the doubt on our shift, because its nights, however, the other night, when we had 5 patients in labor and a couple of fh nosedives, they were called in because we were probably going to do a section on one of the patients...just so happens the fh recovered and she was able to deliver lady partslly, which surprised everyone. so, or gets really p****** that they were called in the first place and tells the doc they want to go home. he says go ahead but that doesn't mean i won't be calling you in the next 10 minutes to come right back. the or was set up but not yet used. there were 5 active patients....3 had fetal distress. at one time i had 2 pts in knee chest....or complains all night long...then, towards the morning, we have another significant dip and end up going to the main or downstairs because our or is dirty due to having just having had a lady partsl delivery in there due to lack of space...down they go. we can't find anesthesia or the or staff. finally do and they are mad mad mad....the doc puts the pt under general and guess what, it was an occult prolapse and a brow presentation.....or yells at the pediatrician since no one bothered to tell him that he needed a card swipe to get into the suite....i wish this was an isolated incident, but they are awful every time. i know we all have bad nights (eves or days), but it bugs me that this is a tolerated attitude of the or.....so, when they were yelling at me, i reminded them if it was their baby, or that of someone they cared about, they might not be so rotten...first time i can recall they were speechless.....i have really had it with them, and i am not the type to feel that way....i know nights is a rotten time to have to come to work, so don't do it is my attitude. i feel they should have to be in house, and in lieu of that, at least try to be decent...oh well, just my two cents...will be making up with them once again i suppose....and sorry to you or people out there. maybe ours is an isolated incident, one can only hope..

[prmenrs, RN]

This sounds like the suits need to figure it out. Nurse Manager to Nurse Manager, docs to docs, all interested parties to problem solve. OB, anes, OR, peds. Who's gonna get called in, when, which OR, etc. Can you call in your own staff to cover sections? Basically, back to the drawing board.

AND, most importantly, everyone needs to agree to do what's best for both the mother and baby(ies) involved!

Go to your NM and start there. If there's an MD/director, get in touch w/him/her also. You have a good narative here of what happened, and just how frustrating it was, so that may give powers that be some ideas to make it better.

Good Luck, babe, let's hope the next encounter is easier!

[DIPLOMATICRN4HIRE, MSN, RN]

As an OR person Im very sorry you had to go through this.

First of all I wont condone the attitude you recieved. Its uncalled for. But on the other hand.... You do know the call group for the OR handles all call for the entire hospital. Its difficult at times to cover all the bases especially when the OR is understaffed as well. Needless to say the attitude is unexcusable.

First of all if you have scrubs that work in the OB during the day then why dont you have them at night as well. If you have a call team that you can call in then your covered and if you need another back up team you should be able to call the OR for coverage.

On that note if you cant get that through your own department then contact the OR and see if you can get your own OB call team to call for nights. That way you will have your own call team that work with the OR but exclusive to your OB only. That way no matter what happens you have coverage. You only need one ciruclator and one scrub, thats it Anesthesia cover themselves anyway so you wont have to call them in, Im assuming you have an inhouse coverage.

Its hard covering all areas of the hospital: I got called in one night 5 times and I had pulled a 16 hr shift, and had to be back at work at 0630. It wears you down and fast.

Zoe

[fergus51]

One of my best friends who works OR told me there is a reason some of those other nurses prefer to work on unconscious people...LOL! People skills are sometimes lacking in nurses from any area. Yelling is never acceptable and should be dealt with by the managers. If it is just complaining I would ignore it, but if the behaviour is really unprofessional I would write up the incident. I know I don't come to work to have people yell at me for doing my job.

[mother/babyRN, RN]

I know no one wants to be called in if there isn't a case, however, interestingly, there was a code in the ER and one on a surgical floor while delivery was going through everything. I know nights is a difficult time for anyone to be called in and then have to stay "just in case", but, unfortunately, the suits condone it....If the OR hadn't been in that night, "just in case", the occult prolapse person would likely have lost her baby...Once I reminded them of that, they did seem to calm down.....They are angry that we don't scrub, but, since there is usually only 1 nurse per area (and the pp doubles for the second in delivery), it isn't as thought we could scrub, recover, admit the baby, assuming it was a good baby, and then care for the infant, good or bad AND the patients if we have other patients in delivery. They just can't seem to understand that. We have been arguing for some time that there should be at least one OR person in house on the night shift. We just recently discovered that there is one RN on every evening in house just in case and she gets to read and watch TV all night long for full pay vs floating like the rest of us to cover the house. But, that is a whole other story. Hopefully, everyone will calm down...I just find it interesting that their attitude is tolerated and even expected when if I even dare to raise my voice, it is to the office for me....