Do we all speak the same language?

Hi Everybody,

Just wondering how many OR nurses here have worked in different states/ provinces/ countries and if you've found that all in all most instruments are called the same thing....kindof doing a bit of research for a future career move :nuke:

I have only worked in one OR, but I can tell you this... even in this particular place, instruments are not called the same thing!!!!! Almost everything has a few names..... peanuts, pushers, kittners, dissectors ... these are all the same name for one item.... and depending on what part of the country you trained in, you'll call it something else...

We have one surgeon who's notorious for not calling any instuments by any of the typical names. We refer to scrubbing with him as playing "Guess what i want next".

I observed some open heart cases in Thailand, and they used the same names that we call our instruments, for the most part, and by the same names, only with accents. They also had a few different retractors that the staff had actually designed. Same perfusion pumps, etc.

Kittners, pushers, etc.: that one instrument probably has the most names and you will hear it called by a multitude of names, no matter which facility that you are in.

See that..... I know a kittner, pusher, etc not as an "instrument" at all..but as a small sponge type thing that is put ON an instrument....As a new person in the OR, I have found that many things have many names, and one doc will call something an adson clamp, another will call it a schnit, another a tonsil. Oh the joys of the OR............

I have worked in about 5 different places, and there are so many different instrument types and names that it is mind boggling...I can think of 4 different names for a hemostat right off the top of my head!

for the longest time, i never knew the proper name for a "chick-chick."