A few months ago I described how starting every workday with the promise, "It's going to be a good day at work," had improved my life (osmag.net/Yh8gPY). Some may call it groundless optimism, but I'm convinced that this little self-declaration can really make a positive difference. Try it yourself in the new year and see what it does for you.

One of the benefits this behavior brought me was not letting life's twists and turns deny me the good day I'd promised myself. By extension, it's helped me to solve a bunch of problems that plague every OR.

• Aggravating assignments. You arrive at work to find that you've been assigned to staff Dr. Pit Viper's add-on. This is an easy choice. You could get upset and shuffle through the day under a storm cloud of dread, or you could wait and see, because you promised yourself a good day. After all, Dr. Pit Viper's cases get cancelled and postponed all the time, and if this one doesn't, it won't do you any good to get worked up about it before it even starts.
• The battle of the OR thermostat. They crank it up, we cool it down. They crank it up, we cool it down. The surgeon, the scrub tech and I are sweating off the pounds. We have plenty of options for keeping the patients toasty. The only ones who are freezing are the skinny waif of a circulator — listen up: Eat something! Get some meat on your bony caboose! I'm going on break, can I get you a sandwich? — and the administrator who dropped in for a visit. If she got out of her worn-in office chair to lend a hand in the OR once in a while, the work would warm her up for sure.
• The surgeon who overreaches. You know the type. He schedules more into his block time than he could reasonably expect to accomplish in 8 hours. There's not much a positive-thinking nurse can do about this (other than serving his patients a full breakfast in pre-op), but you can avoid setting yourself up for annoyance. It's easier to deal with if you face the fact that you're going to get overtime whenever he's on site, and if you make his block days the one day of the week you don't schedule anything after your shift. Then get to work, and help him be as efficient as possible.
• Team members who try your patience. The scrub tech is bossy. He's territorial. He thinks he knows everything and he throws you under the bus every chance he gets. So kill him with kindness. Let your antagonism go for a few weeks. Watch how he works. Anticipate what he's going to ask for and get ready to flip it onto the field. In the long run, it'll be worth it. You won't be chasing after items the tech really should've taken care of as often. You'll learn some good setup habits. You might even make a new friend, and in the OR, you need all the friends you can get.
• Dealing with other departments. I respect the ICU, the ER, the lab and the floor nurses, but if we in surgery could handle patients without their support, I'm pretty sure we could go through life without ever talking to anyone else in our facilities. Other departments never seem that keen on us either. One time a case required a call to ICU, where the rude nurse hung up on me. I begged my colleagues to call her onto our carpet so I could make her cry, but then I asked myself, did I really want to be the reason for someone else's bad day? I let it go. For me, that was a good day. By the following Monday, I'd forgotten her name. OSM