Emergencies On Call

I agree with Rose Queen, the supply room suggestion is a great idea!

Is it possible to ask to see what the "posting" looks like for cases that are common emergencies for your facilities? Then familiarize yourself with the things listed? Our pull cards list supplies and instruments, but the full "posting" generates a printed preference card with comments that include medications and other things you might need, generally from the perspective of the circulator.

I would also recommend looking at the things that go together. Like, to use the bovie you need a console, a grounding pad, a pencil and a tip. Think about the things you need with other equipment. That way when asked for a specific thing, you can make one trip to gather the things your scrub may not have pulled. It also helps because then you're familiar enough that if you don't have a runner or a tech to help get you what you need then you can pick what you need out of the equipment room. A lot of the things we commonly need are kept on our trauma carts. We then have the instruments and supplies ready and portable for emergencies where we don't have time to wait for instruments to be pulled in CPD.

Like Rose Queen, I work in a trauma center. Most of the time we have staff available for unforeseen emergencies. By far most of my working experience has been day shift on weekdays when there is naturally more staff. The contrast to nights and weekends is huge though. Over nights and weekends our protocol is generally to call more staff in when we're down to only having staff for one room free, either when the trauma pager goes off or if there are multiple cases in queue on the add on list that are urgent to emergent. Our charge nurse calls extra staff in as we begin to exceed the capacity of what the staff present in house can handle. If we have a room "about to" start something like a lap appy, a lap chole, a trach in an already intubated patient, something that could wait, and there is an inbound trauma, the "more routine" room is generally held until the pending trauma is sorted out. Some cases there is "no settling" - things never stop being chaotic.

I work as a traveler in OR. The help can vary by facility. I usually ask to start in a sipply room.and equipment areas if I can on my first days. Pull cases, browse the equipment storage areas. Get a phone number list, some hospitals have a pre-made lost of important numbers. Find people you can trust that are helpful and knowledgeable. You would be suprised what people will do to help if you treat them nicely.

Another thing is to pay attention on a daily basis to the cases so you learn and know whats going on with the anatomy and what different types of instruments are and are used for.