Surgeon's Preference Card

Hmmm. Wish i could help, but ours are done under a computerized system. We went to that because our old ones were worn out, too.

This is horrible but we had a computerized system that was by no means perfect but ok. They(administration) have decided to go back to the handwritten case cards which are outdated and inaccurate. What a mess....:angryfire

Where I work, our preference card is our charge sheet, and the preference list comes up with each case cart. It makes it easy for those who pick for the case and those who are in the room to know exactly what each surgeon wants. We also have a designated spot in the front page for notes so nurses/techs who aren't familiar with the surgeons/cases know what they need for the case. (positioning, medication, special instruments, bovie settings ... etc) The preference card is constantly updated, so it's a very useful tool for the staff.

We still use the hand written one and it is my job along with my Charge Nurse to maintain the acurateness of them. I recently updated the Registrars folder and made that a KISS one. Operation (in a plastic sleeve) on one side in an A4 folder and on the opposite side a list of the registrars and the list of glove size and peculiarities. The front page has the name of all registrars and their contact ph number 9if they have their own cell phone. Pretty simple but it seems to work.

The most difficult bit is maintaining the Consultants' fad books - never enough time even though there are 2 of us responsible for it. The books/pages are altered as required but updating does take a while.

Hope that's useful for you. It was a nice little project for me to do my levelling and most appreciated by my colleagues who were envious that it was so simple and so effective. The registrars like it too. Most of our consultants used to be registrars at my hospital so they were already familiar with what we did.

Botnut.

I have devepoled a simple surgeon preference card system that has been used at our hospital for over 2 years in Operating Theatre.

We use to have those crappy card system and it has been a slow process but now all the nurses enter their surgeon preference card system.

We have over 22 theatres with a computer in every theatre and the application is available in all the theatres. So any changes can be made real time in conjunction with the Surgeon present if required.

If any one is interested I could organise a demo at our theatre. Pls email me on [email protected] I work in a brisbane on the south side

REgard s

Tony Albuquerque:coollook:

In most of our clinical specialties we have printout preference data. We are slowly getting everything put on the computer which will be a great help.

We are all computerized and our system is like the one poopsiebear describes. Our system is screwed up. It keeps reverting back to things of old (ie. we switched to US Surgical for suture about 3 years ago and changed all the cards...it wasn't long before the docs demanded Ethicon back and we switched again...now we sometimes still get US Surgical to show back up on the cards [remember three years ago LOL]).

We are told that it is getting better.....LOL....

Now that I am finished with that rant...It would be a great system if they could only fix the bug that reverts everything back.

Good to read about preference cards/fad books and how we all end up the same but different approaches. Where I work we have migrated from the "Floppy disc" (last century!) to the USB stick. Eventually it will be totally computerised I guess. Each surgeon has a printout of all their operations in their fad book and it regularly gets updated (monthly). It does pay to have this "old fashioned" method especially if you have new grads or new to theatre people arriving enmasse.

Sometimes the simple things work the best - as us old scrubbers know!

BoTnut:nurse: