Quel day!
Today was just in general a very annoying day. It was late day so we had an hour long meeting before any rooms actually got started. Everything was fine and dandy until the medical director dude (don't know his official title but he's in charge of the anesthesiologists and possibly the surgeons) came up to tell us why our turnover time was so important and that we needed to speed things up. The reason we need to work our asses off between cases? So the freaking surgeons can get paid! What kind of BS is that? The surgeons are whining that there turnover time is like 30 minutes up to (very rarely) an hour. I can't believe that!
Here's what happens after they finish surgery meaning they put that last stitch or staple on the patient:
Anesthesia works on waking the patient up
Scrub and Circulator work on cleaning patient off and dressing the wound, possibly while trying to finish counting and wrap up paper work
Circulator needs to call recovery room
Scrub needs to clean off back table and mayo stand cover
Circulator and Scrub drop everything to help move patient onto stretcher if anesthesia has already woken the patient up
Circulator and Scrub try to finish every thing up in the room
Anesthesia and Circulator take patient to recovery room
Scrub takes instruments to the back for cleaning (and may need to wash them and flash them if needed for the next case)
Circulator gives report to recovery room nurse, takes specimens to pathology, turns in paper work
Scrub or Circulator (whoever gets there first) pulls next case cart around to room and retrieves items (such as suture, instruments, special equipment, etc) that are missing on the cart
Scrub and Circulator wait for housekeeping to finish cleaning the room if they aren't finished yet
Scrub and Circulator push case cart into room and double check to make sure they have everything
Circulator sets up room (including turning the bed and remaking it if housekeeping didn't do it)
Scrub opens room (meaning opening the sterile supplies onto a sterile field)
Circulator helps Scrub open if she has time
Scrub scrubs in and sets up
Circulator and Scrub count anything that has potential for being left in the patient
Circulator at some point needs to interview patient
Circulator and Anesthesia bring patient into room
So that's the gyst of what the OR staff has to do during the turnover. But no, the surgeons and anesthesia have NO idea all the crap we need to do between cases. And I, for one, am not going to rush and make mistakes so the freaking surgeon can have their freaking payday.
You know surgeons and anesthesia have nurse shadows so that we can see the world from their point of view. Maybe they should shadow a nurse someday to see exactly all the crap we have to put up with. Oh and maybe let them see what it's like to live off our wages because I can just about garantee that what I make in a month they probably make in a day, possibly a week max. "I have a house payment, and a car payment, and my kid's education to pay for" yeah well let me tell you something. So do nurses and techs! We have those same payments to make on much less.
And another thing brought up in the meeting was something about how the suture should be in the front of the supply room that we share we the anesthesia techs simply because nurses get paid more! That was infuriating. Under no circumstances is it ok for someone to say "I'm better than you because I make more money." It's not okay for the surgeons to do that to nurses, or for the nurses to do that techs, and further on down the line.
Then of course nothing went right in my room. We almost lost a needle. The doctor kept dropping everything. The equipment didn't work right. And so on and so forth. But what can you do? Let's pray tomorrow's better.
I have a softball game later. Let's hope that goes better than my day.