Celebrating Nurses’ Monumental Impact
There is a myriad of ways to participate in National Nurses Week, which is celebrated May 6-12, from honoring your staff RNs with a gift or event to taking steps to let...
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By: John Kelly, IV
Published: 3/31/2015
Just when I thought I'd seen it all, another hard-to-believe moment manifests in the OR. The wisdom of experience merely means that I have personally encountered nearly everything that can go wrong in surgery. Here's just a sampling of the memory menu of the last 24 years of surgical bliss, all based on true events I wouldn't believe unless I'd been there to witness them.
Code Blue, Room 3!
Three nitrates and 4 Ativans later, I explained to the nurse that the Raytec sponge on the back table was not expendable. So much for sponge counts! Thank God it was an allograft. We merely requested another, let it thaw and re-prepared it. The hospital (and again, my coronaries) took the hit.
Five Hail Marys, 3 sublingual nitrates and 3 Libriums later, I asked if a crotchet hook was available. No, I was not about to start an afghan. They used crotchet hooks in the pioneer days of shoulder arthroscopy to retrieve sutures. Thank heavens there was one in the set — undoubtedly purchased before the scrub nurse was born. I then proceeded to repair a rotator cuff, glenoid labrum and fill in a bone defect all without the aid of a suture retriever. Thank God I took a course in mindfulness. My Zen state prevented me from sojourning to the material supply office and throttling the manager.
Captain of the ship
Stuff does indeed happen and I ultimately take responsibility. I have since learned to be more proactive in my pre-surgical planning, including a pre-flight check of sterile instruments as well as communication of the steps of the procedure so that events such as errant graft disposal don't occur. In the meantime, I have yet to receive my first coronary stent. Thank you, Lipitor!
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