First day on call...

Specialties Operating Room

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I started in the OR back at the end of June and took my first buddy call yesterday. Quick summary: we spent 14 hours there!

First up was a nephrectomy. This was booked ahead of time, but this wasn't actually as much of an advantage as it may sound. It was booked as a hand assisted lap, but the doc changed it to a laparotomy before we started. Naturally, this means that we had pulled a lot of laparascopic stuff ahead of time, and not all the stuff for a full laparotomy. Good call though-- the kidney was the size of a small cantaloupe and never would have come out through a hand port. Also took out 3-- 60 cc syringes full of pus!

Next up, a bipolar hip on a 94 year old lady and for "dessert" a quickie cysto, retro, stent insertion.

It was a killer day and I'm sure glad I wasn't alone!

It's now 0600 the next morning, and I'm ready to leave again after 5 hr sleep-- got a fractured wrist that needs Nancy nails. We've got the nails, but nobody can find the instruments:o. When I left last night, the nursing supervisor was busy calling other hospitals to try to arrange a loaner set...

I gotta say that although it was a hard day, I had a blast! Can't say I'd want all of my calls to be that tough, but this was a very exciting into and I really felt that I was doing valuable work. I LOVE the OR!

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It’s great you love the OR and can do the conversions well. That is a test within itself in how smooth the transaction runs. Good to see you made it well. Keep up the good work!!!

One of my busiest call days was starting at 0630 one day and finishing at 0130 the next. I was wiped out.

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Update-- they found a loaner set of Nancy nails instruments, so we were able to do the case as scheduled on Sunday morning. Went nice and easy and we got out pretty quickly.

The, I got called back in for a 5:30 appendectomy!

Ended up with 5 cases for my first call weekend, a total of 22 hr. I was totally exhausted, but really jazzed up by the whole thing.

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Specializes in 5 yrs OR, ASU Pre-Op 2 yr. ER.

I love call time :) It's a surgical box of chocolates :)

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I am with Marie, I LOVE call. However, my first night on buddy call was a doozie as well. It was a 23 hour day, after my regular shift was done we had a TFN, 2 c-sections, a lap appy, a post-tonsillar bleed and 2 eye cases!! One was a "ruptured globe" (some guy shook up a coke bottle full of dry ice) and the other was this acute glaucoma case, I think they called it an iridectomy? It was great because I remember that I was supposed to go over to my mother-in-law's house for dinner that night and I said to my call buddy "I hope we work here all night!" because I really didn't want to go see her and sure enough I got my wish. It was crazy! We would be rolling a patient into PACU and the anesthesiologist was ready to pull her hair out, she'd say "You aren't going to believe this!" and we'd get another one and another one. The people I was on call with look back at that night as one of the worst they had ever worked but for me it was probably one of the best!:smilecoffeecup:

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Well. . . your first day on call is very memorable! After 18 years on call as a Surg. Tech and then 13 years as an O.R. nurse, I am in "on-call" heaven. I have traded the wear and tear, adrenaline rush (I do miss that), sleep deprivation of being on call at a level II Trauma Hospital for the Level IV community hospital. Yes!!:lol2: believe it or not, I am on call tonight! I went home at 1530, ate dinner with my husband and enjoyed the evening. I have prepared for my call tonight. I have put the plastic garbage bag on the window of the Jeep so I won't have to scrape the frost off (frost warning tonight) and set out my shoes, glasses, keys and purse by the front door. I am ready to leap into action. But:uhoh21: where are all the patients? Level IV duty is minimal. We could have a 2 a.m. C-section or emergency retinal case. That has happened only a few times a month.

Enjoy your call and the experience it brings you. I think I'll sleep tonight. If I don't (am I tempting fate with all this talk?), I'll post tomorrow and let you know.

carpe diem,

Fisherman's daughter

P.S. Thanks to the wonderful extra staff who stayed to fix my mom's fractured hip last Thursday night (Kudos to the O.R. staff at U.of W. Medical Center)

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