September 28, 2023
There’s a significant problem in many operating rooms across the United States: Electrosurgical devices can cause significant patient burns and life-threatening fires...
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By: Paula Watkins
Published: 4/3/2008
In the medical field, there are a lot of details to remember and a lot of rules to commit to memory. That's probably why our professions have historically relied on so many mnemonic devices, such as acronyms or rhyming ditties — to help us stay on top of them all.
In OR nursing, for instance, it's a well-known fact that any question we have regarding the sterility of supplies or instruments is quickly settled by "If in doubt, throw it out." And what healthcare provider can forget "On Old Olympus's Towering Top, A Finn And German Viewed Some Hops," recited in school to remember the 12 cranial nerves? There's kind of a twisted poetry to it.
I asked one of my favorite surgeons here in Connecticut if his med school education had included word games or songs to help with the recall. He began to spout them off faster than I could write them down.
By the end of the day, I had a cast of surgeons, nurses, techs and anesthesia providers offering up the catchphrases they'd learned as students, residents and longtime surgical personnel. Besides the memory devices, though, the bits of healthcare wisdom that had been passed down from person to person over the years were even more entertaining in their skewed depiction of our workplace. They might even be suitable for framed needlepoints on OR walls.
Read Ms. Watkins' work at www.outpatientsurgery.net/category/humor.php.
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