sop832

He is crazy as a ****house rat, although I think his substance of abuse is bacon. He has been written up 4 x in the past 3 weeks ( yes I am one of the four). I have never gotten any kind of feedback any time that I have written any surgeon up, so I don't expect any now. And yes, he's been to anger management, and I don't think that he has punched out any computer monitors since then ( that's why he was sent). It hasn't changed the verbal abuse, though.

I would like to smack the nurse that first told a surgeon that we keep preference cards!

Sigh. I know, you're right, I just have to stiffen my backbone and do it. Thank you.

When I woke my DH on Wednesday morning with the words "Honey, I have some bad news", he said"Oh, no, do we have to move?"

A surgeon ripped me apart today in front another nurse, a CRNA and a PA. I fully plan to write him up, but now I'm not sure that I should submit it or just keep it in my files at home since I received an apology which I felt was sincere after the case. The incident that prompted the behavior was actually rather minor, but he was particularly irritable today andI think that it was a "straw that broke the camel's back " kind of thing. He is pretty volatile, and does have a reputation for not apologizing, and in fact seemingly forgetting the incident quickly. He has been written up many times before and sent to anger management. So do I give him a pass on this one time? I honestly think he was sincere in his apology.

Yes, very often it did work for that shift, but it really p*****d off the oncoming shift, so we used it judiciously.

It took me a while to learn to accept my physical limitations, and to say, "thank you" when someone younger/stronger offers to lift a patient or a heavy basket of instruments or a traction setup ( I work in an OR). I resented it at first, but I decided to accept the offer in the spirit in which it is intended. I intend to retire in 5 years, not go out on disability from trying to show that I can do anything that anyone else can. And I, also, am 61.

I actually love the smell of benzoin, but not in the amount that you describe! We used benzoin on the skin to both toughen the skin and hold the adhesive tape on the dressing. We changed dressings once a day, and if the skin wasn't protected by the benzoin, it would blister and rip when the dressing was removed.

I work in the OR now, but worked on a post-op/stepdown ICU floor from 1976-1979. All elective surgery patients were admitted at least a day ahead of surgery, sometimes a couple of days if tests were needed. One OLD on-gym had quite a setup going for " his girls". Every one of his patients (with a uterus, that is), had to have a D+C every year. The patient was admitted on Friday afternoon, and he had usually a dozen cases posted every Saturday. The patient had her procedure, relaxed for a day, then went home Monday. He felt that every housewife deseved a weekend off and the hospital was the perfect place for that, 3 meals a day (except for that pesky NPO past midnight on Friday), and being waited on hand and foot by the nurses. He was a real piece of work, paternalistic and condescending. He threw a fit when we quit wearing our caps ( mine got knocked off by a bedside curtain and fell into a bedside commode which a patient had just used), and would look at a nurse (sans cap) and say, " I need a nurse to help me." When the nurse informed him that he did indeed have a nurse, his reply was, "How would I know that? You don't look like a nurse." Patients stayed in the hospital for a (now) laughable amount of time. Hernia and hemmorhoid patients a week, cholecystectomy patients 10 days. And all patients stayed in the hospital until they were well enough to go home, there were no rehabs, and I don't remember any home health care. We would receive a discharge order, someone found a wheelchair, the nurse assigned to that patient packed up the room (and remember that patients were in the hospital for at least a week, usually more, and every one and their brother sent flowers, get well cards, fruit and chocolate baskets), and we wheeled them to the car. They left with our best wishes, but no discharge instructions or follow up instructions. By the time you got back from the discharge, there was usually another patient on the way up to occupy that bed.

We tied a knot in the bottom sheet to prevent the patient from dying on our shift!

Pick of the litter

Hmmm.. Why is an anesthesiologist criticizing your prep? And how is that telling the physician what to do? If you're on orientation, where was your preceptor? It sounds to me like you're well out of there.

You DO have patient interaction, and it is the perfect amount for me. You talk to the patient in prep area and when they enter the OR. Then the anesthesia provider takes over and the general anesthetic or sedation takes effect. My "personality tests"show that I am task oriented, so the technical aspects and the "only one patient at a time" really works for me. Some nurses think that OR nurses are stuck up, rude and mean. At the risk of bragging, I'm not. I'm a really nice person, but I will raise a fuss if I see patient care compromised. That is our task, the care of the patient when they are at their most vulnerable.

As I read over what I wrote, I don't mean to imply that you did anything wrong, you and the scrub nurse both confirmed the settings, he just wasn't listening.

No matter what you say, or what format is used for timeouts and/or giving information about the case ( bovie settings, tourniquet pressure, Meds on the field, or anything either routine or out of the ordinary, ) my experience is that 97% of surgeons hear, "Whaa, Whaa, Whaa" just like Charlie Brown's teacher. Most surgeons (men and women) do not deem what nurses (men and women) say as important, even if they mouth the platitudes about being a team, blah, blah, blah. I can only count a handful of surgeons that are actually interested in what I say. Since I have a very soft voice, I have had to enlist the scrub nurses' help in not handing the knife until the surgeon acknowledges that I have been heard. Only when I think what is important has been acknowledged, is the case allowed to proceed. The ball is then in their court, and if there is a dispute over what is said, I will have made others aware. And if it comes to an incident report, believe me I will document that. Excuse my tangent, I know that wasn't your question, but this is what I find in the real world.