mochilover

Thank you all for your responses! You have no idea how much relief this has brought me! I kept thinking what if the pt sues and this would be the end of my nursing career...😱 The surgery were for cysts removal, no ovary was being removed. Now let's say the surgeon was actually removing ovary, how should it be handled? Would he then need to break scrub or call to speak with family and obtain verbal consent? And as far as family update goes, how much information should the nurse give on the phone?

I'm new to OR and is currently undergoing periop101 training at a teaching hospital. This week during my first clinical rotation, I observed a surgery being performed on a patient without consent (pt was consented for R side ovarian cyst removal and surgeon removed Right ovarian cyst but also proceeded to remove the Left one)! My preceptor (who's a highly experienced and respected preceptor) reminded the surgeon that we do not have consent on the other side but surgeons did not stop the surgery due to "medical necessity". My preceptor then called the charge nurse and asked her to report up the chain of command and inform that we would filed an incident report (which we did). I wasn't with the pt in preop so I don't know if the possibility of bilateral removal were even discussed but it was definitely not written on consent. And I honestly did not know what/or if anything happened in the surgery that led to "medical necessity" of the other side removal (I was charting behind computer and grabbing supplies so I didn't really see what's going on when it happened). When I called the family for update, my preceptor said to inform family surgery is still going but do not mention anything about another side being performed...it's surgeon's responsibility to speak with the family and patient afterward. However, I have an uneasy feeling all weekend thinking about this...how else things could be done differently? Why didn't my preceptor or anesthesia or scrub tech or charge nurse do anything to halt the surgery? Or does this happen more often in OR than I think? Should i have stopped the surgeon and have him scrub out to speak with the family? Also, Should I be freaking out about liability and losing my job/license? I know I'm technically in training but I do have an RN license and my name was on the OR documentation...