Lisa

I work in a 700 bed hospital in Maritime Canada. I am on a 36-bed general surgery stepdown floor. We have 5-6 patients on days, 6-7 on evenings and team 18 at night. Like you, our OR goes all day, all night every day...at any one time we have a number of patients on constant care...a secretary every day and weekday evenings...DOSA and ER admissions constantly....a 12 bed SICU to which we have a revolving door somedays !!!! Most days we are able to just cope...a few days we do even better, but more often lately, we are not coping well at all....the patients are sicker than they have ever been . Those who used to be in the unit are now on the floor. All in all, a very frustrating experience !!!!

hi....in response to your question about dressing changes....we support a large number of general, vascular and thoracic surgeries.....without exceptiuon, as soon as the incision has stopped its initial ooze (usually within the first 12-24 hours), we leave it directly open to the air. We deal with a lot of dirty bowel resections, so outr infection rates are understandably higher, but we feel this is due to the perforation preop and not the lack of a simple dressing postop. Of course, if any incisions are opened and require packings/debridements or simply need a dressing to facilitate nursing management (like in a large person's abd skinfold), then we may certainly use our discretion. Hope this helps !!!!