Respect?

Respect is earned on a daily basis and is a two-way process. When you are excellent at what you do, self-confident, but not arrogant and open to new ideas, you will find respect is there. If you read some of my previous posts, I have dealt with this before, but a few areas of emphasis.

1. Understand the politics of the operating room. There may well be on OR tech who has been there since the Mayo brothers were doing surgery and who controls a lot. Get on his/her good side without giving up any thing.

2. Do what is best for the patient. You will never go wrong.

3. Don't talk about money or your personal life in the operating room. I think it is inappropriate to talk about money with people who make more or less than you. No good will come of it.

4. Gossip spreads fast in an OR. A minor complication will be known by a lot of people. Keep your mouth shut and don't be hard on others without knowing all of the facts.

5. Understand and respect the stresses others have and expect them to do the same for you.

I find I command a lot of respect as a CRNA, but it is not the most important thing for me.

Just a side note, last week I administered an anesthetic to an MD anesthesiologist. (I work by myself) Something didn't seem quite right after the nasal intubation. After the muscle relaxant wore off, he coughed the tube out of the trachea. There was a large mucous plug in the tube. Also, because of a bad nose bleed, he was difficult to reintubate. Sats and CO2 were normal though the incident, which lasted less than 10 minutes, but seemed like 30. He did fine and has no complaints. But I think I lost a few years with that one. Now there is an example of stress. I had my private yoga class that night, which helped deal with the situation.

Yoga