Operating times

Specialties Operating Room

Published

There is a surgeon at my hospital who takes forever to operate. The latest was 10 hrs. on a ventral hernia repair. It's not like he's doing transplants or neurosurgery. I, fortunately, don't have to work with him because I am privately employed, but the other nurses and CRNA's do. He is driving everyone crazy. How is this kind of thing handled at your hospitals? Thanks.

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

10 HOURS?????

Is he a part of a surgical group? Are there any other general surgeons there? When we had a problem like this with one of our ortho docs (who took 7 hours on a simple fracture), another ortho doc struck up a conversation with him about how long he took (and not in a demeaning way, he said). We saw a difference the next time.

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Our Doc who loves Bookwalters for EVERY surgery may be related to this guy! He can take hours exploring before he gets to the actual hernia/appy/gallbladder....

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10 hours for a ventral hernia repair!?! What took so long?

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I didn't do the case with him. No one seems to know what took him so long. He has been known to take 3 hours to do a colonoscopy. Who knows? The people who get stuck working with him have just about had it. Not sure what they can do though. He's a solo guy, so there has no colleagues to speak with him about it.

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I thought we had some slow surgeons but this is unreasonable. I'm assuming that this is essentially a habit? Maybe this case was particlurly long but he usually works a a very slow pace? Not that this pt had an unusual unexpected event intra-op. I don't think most sugeons could take 10 hrs for a ventral hernia if they tried. Maybe if for some reason there was a lot of plastic work to be done or internal repairs from a previous surgery. Please tell me there is much more to the story.

I would be appalled if someone I knew (or, really, any perfect stranger) was exposed to 9 more hours of anesthesia than necessary. Not to mention the added positioning risks, inreased vulnerability to infection being open that long- and how many times did people go in and out of that room (just the charge nurse alone must have opened that door a few times to see what was up!) etc. If he and the higher ups don't care about pt safety, what about the money? Insurance companies can't possibly be willing to reimburse for that kind of time!

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Specializes in 5 yrs OR, ASU Pre-Op 2 yr. ER.
He's a solo guy, so there has no colleagues to speak with him about it.

He's the only GS there?

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I think this guy use to work at my hospital! Has anyone seriously thought about a peer review, especially if he is the only GS.:idea:

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I agree with MSJORN. I am an RN, but even I know the risk of having some one under general anasthesia for that lenght of time. Surely there was something else going on in the case. I haven't even done neuro that has taken that long. I did see a surgeon use over 150 staples to put in the mesh for a hernia, he would have used more, but he used all that was availabe in the hospital.

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