OR Pet peeves

I had a surgeon be extra "antsy" one day about getting his cases turned around, and we were working at tip-top speed WITH an OR orderly to help with the process. He was standing at the door, tapping his foot, and watching US do the work, so I went out the door and grabbed the mop bucket. I wheeled it back to the room, ran the mop through the squeezer and handed it to him. He looked a little taken aback when I said "If you want it done ANY faster, you're gonna have to help." BUT - he took it like a good sport and actually came in the room and mopped it! He had already seen his next patient when he saw the previous one, so he had little else to do at the time. BUT - from then on, he left us alone, especially when he saw me scrubbing his room, because he knew I'm not shy and won't hesitate to put him to work! That was fun!

As a post op nurse, my biggest pet peeve is the rush for room turnover taking precedence over everything else- esp. patients!!! I'm talking about patients coming to PACU w/wet betadine on the linens, not putting peri pads on D&Cs & C-sections, telling us "oh he/she was incontinent after we moved them" leaving US to clean up the mess, & not giving a full detailed report (ie forgetting to mention the pt has vag pkg in or that there's a foley in, they vomited/bled & you forget to tell us you flipped the pillow so we stick our hands in it-- etc. etc. to name a few) leaving specimens in the PACU-- sloppy sloppy -- all b/c of the RUSH to turnover the room to keep the almighty SURGEON happy!! It doesn't happen all the time, but once you start cutting corners it becomes habit.

My biggest pet peeve is getting in the grove with my team, my room is all set, I've thought out my case, everythings good to go, then I get pulled to another case. I'm told so & so doesn't work with certain Docs, or they don't do that speciality. Me, I do everything, but why do my co-workers (who take call) not have to do somethings. What happens if an ortho case comes in on Sat. night?

"a surgeon, the moment the pager goes off---what is it? who is paging me? then you relay the info from the floor nurse paging and the surgeon goes into a tirade about why he was paged in the first place for something so trivial.... lol..."


Oh, I can't stand the beeper. I also feel bad for the person who is paging the resident or surgeon. Most of the time, they are floor nurses who don't know that we are in the middle of an operation (no matter how many times I told them). It seems that the urgent or not urgent issue never gets resolved most of the time, but it takes away the attention and focus on the surgery at hand.

OK Everyone. I have the all time killer going on right now. As the departmets educator I was a silly person and made the stupid choice to take weekend admistriative call. (Really dumb move-but I do pay the price, even if I do get to say No alot) It's Sunday morning and it is now convienent for Doctors to do surgery. We had 3 surgeries boarded to start the day and have only completed the first one. That one was done at 9:00 AM. (It's now 12:10 PM) and it is now time to play the game with the "Orthopoops" Oh sorry, I meant the Orthopedics Surgeons. . It's 3 hours later and 40 phone calls between the OR crew and me, and we still haven't started a case. What are the problems: Patient isn't cleared- Internist isn't coming in till "later", Have to wait for the family-they will be here in an hour or two, Oops 1st surgeon now having breakfast-second surgeon on phone screaming & declaring his Bipolar hip that has been waiting for 3 days is now an emergency- "I"m here and ready and he's not, do me first, if I can't go now I'm calling the CEO and then my wife, you can deal with both of them if I can't go right now" Oh be still my heart- first let ME call your wife, I'm sure we can compare notes about what an A** Hole you are, and the CEO-great we are on first name bases after all and I can't wait to tell him my story either. My next thought is "I'll do you first" after I have killed the MDA who won't help make a decision to save his soul, 1st surgeon "get me a second crew NOW my case is an emergency too", (this pateint was admitted on Monday- real emergency) now I again make 40 more phone calls, have a ****** off staff for bothering them, & I can only get the pleassure to tell him nobody is answering the phone, or they are hanging up on me or that they said "It's Sunday and I have my own life, I'll see you tomorrow", this of course is the best part. Now for my complaint I have just wasted 4 hours of my time, and my teenage son wants to kill me because all the phone calls got him up 2 hours earlier than he wanted to get up, and now I wonder why I'm doing this job, because this is the real killer-either of these could have been done on Friday, but no I had to send staff home on Low Census.

I hear you about the beeper!! I call them "table proximity alarms". The closer the surgeon gets to the OR table, the more likely they'll go off.
Unless it's STAT, I have this pt to take care of first,,,when I get a second, I will check on it. Likely I answer faster than that doc does anyway!!

Mike

How about the charge nurse who forgets to assign lunch relief for you and your tech?? This happens all too often ....

How about when the OR manager puts up a "go home early" list because it's slow. Then she sends so many people home that there's noone left to give breaks or lunches

Ok, I got a pet peeve. Scrub techs that pretend their instruments are a pair of drumsticks during cases, rather than paying attention to watch is going on during the case. Surgeons have had to tell them more than once to pay attention to what is going on.

SHAME on them. Speaking as a CST, I am embarassed to hear this. They need their knuckles rapped with a Deaver retractor for such behavior. Drumsticks indeed........