The Surgeon Can't Continue...

Specialties Operating Room

Published

Specializes in being a Credible Source.

Hi there.

I'm a brand new nursing student and I just read the following from the California BON website:

It is important to be aware that although the RN may perform the first assistant's surgical duties, the RN does not possess the same medical surgical knowledge, skill, and judgment that a surgeon does and provisions should be made to protect the consumers' health in the event the surgeon could not continue for any reason.

So what kinds of provisions are they talking about?

Have you ever had a surgeon prove unable to continue the operation?

Just curious...

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Specializes in Peri-op/Sub-Acute ANP.

Yup, had a surgeon go out cold on my while I was assisting. We had to pull a surgeon from another room (on a two-surgeon case) to hold the fort until we could get another surgeon from the original surgeon's practice to come and take over the case. Fortunately for me there was no active bleeding taking place at the point the original surgeon passed out and we were at a point in the procedure where we could just hold. It was still pretty frightening though and I have no idea what would have happened if a) the surgery had been after-hours and there were no other rooms running, or b) there was active bleeding or we had been at a particularly critical point in the surgery.

Now, as a caveat, I should say that I was not working as an RN when this happened but a CST, but the dilemma would have been pretty much the same. Either way you are not qualified to continue without the surgeon supervising you.

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Specializes in OR.
Hi there.

I'm a brand new nursing student and I just read the following from the California BON website:

So what kinds of provisions are they talking about?

Have you ever had a surgeon prove unable to continue the operation?

Just curious...

yup, had one surgeon who suddenly became very green then began to violently vomit. He was not able to continue, so I had to call his partner stat to finish the surgery.:barf02:

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Specializes in CST in general surgery, LDRs, & podiatry.
hi there.

i'm a brand new nursing student and i just read the following from the california bon website:

so what kinds of provisions are they talking about?

have you ever had a surgeon prove unable to continue the operation?

just curious...

thank goodness i was not in the or when/where this happened, but a general surgeon i used to scrub with several years ago told me about a then-recent incident at another hospital where a surgeon he knew well was in the middle of a case and keeled over on the patient from a massive mi. he was gone before he hit the floor. the reason this surgeon knew about it is because he's the one that got called in stat to finish the case for the first doc. apparently there wasn't anyone else available to finish his lap chole for him...........guess nobody has any guarantees, huh?

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