A real OR is not like what you see on Grey's Anatomy. We don't spend hours in between cases sitting around chatting about our lives or hooking up in On-Call rooms. Our job is not that much different then yours. We have scheduled surgery's that we try very hard to complete on time. Our turnover time between cases is short-we have maybe 15 minutes to clean the room, pull in the supplies and equipment for the next cases and get setup. It's not a gravy job by any means.
This past week has been particularly challenging for me. Maybe it's because this is my last week of being on the morning shift. I'm not at all a morning person so getting up at 5am to be at work at 6:30 is not exactly ideal for me. Next week I start working the 3pm-11pm shift which I'm very much looking forward to. So it very well could be that I'm just done with these early mornings and it's making me drag a little knowing I just have a couple days left of it. Or maybe the stress of working two jobs for the last six months has finally caught up to me. Either way it's been a difficult week.
Every day I've been in a different service and most of the procedures have been fairly new to me. That in itself is pretty stressful for me. But I've also been with some pretty demanding doctors. Don't get me wrong, they're great doctors. But they've been very fast paced and very particular. Normally I'm really good with these kinds of doctors. My attention to detail is always on point, I'm very organized,and my technique is very good. All things doctors like in a tech. But it's all just added to my stress level so I've been pulling my hair out a little.
Yesterday I spent the day in ortho. My first case of the morning set the tone for my day. It was a knee arthroscopy which is a pretty simple procedure. The doctor makes a small incision in the knee and inserts a trocar into the knee.
A scope connected to a camera that transmits the video onto a tv screen is inserted into the trocar so we can see what's going on inside.
This is much less invasive to the patient and we can fix a lot of problems without having to open their leg up completely. When I've previously done knee scopes it's been with a doctor who has a PA (Physicians Assistant) with him so there wasn't too much for me to do. Yesterday I was working with a new doctor and it was just me and him. This meant that I had to perform my job and the job the PA usually does.
What does the PA usually do? They have to hold the leg in very awkward and unnatural positions so that the doctor can see in all the nooks and crannies of the knee. It's a labor intensive job under the most ideal circumstances. Yesterday was not under ideal circumstances. The patient's leg was pretty big and the doctor was having a hard time seeing the problem area. Which meant I was holding this leg very high and pulled to one side very tightly for a good hour. My arms were shaking by the time we had finally finished and I was exhausted. It was only 9 in the morning. And for the rest of the day he was moving so fast-I don't think I sat down until 1pm. By 3 my arms felt like Jello.
On Tuesday I was on GYN service. I really like GYN surgery so I was excited. The doctor I was working with is pretty great but he likes to move very quickly. So for him it's important that you plan ahead as much as you can and have all the equipment and supplies at your fingertips. This makes for a tiring day simply because you don't have any down time. But all was going well until around 1pm. That's when a newer doctor came into the room to assist him. The surgery was routine and towards the end the newer doctor put in a Foley catheter and asked me to hook up the drainage bag. "Of course, no problem." A couple minutes later she says, "Oh, I have to unhook that drainage bag for a second." Um...okay go for it. I wasn't paying too much attention to what she was doing because I was trying to keep the table running smoothly.
I looked up just in time to see her struggling with the bag. Instead of just unscrewing she was trying to pull it apart. Then she figured out to unscrewed but she was still pulling so when it came apart pee flew EVERYWHERE. Including in my face and worse, it got behind my eye protection and directly into my eye. Oh yeah, pee in my eye.
I freaked. And yelled (but only a little). And as I'm breaking scrub to run to flush my eye out the original doctor says to me, "Lisa, you better hurry up and flush that out! You don't want to get a UTI." (Get it? UTI. U-T-EYE) Yeah, he thinks he's pretty funny.
They don't show that on Grey's do they?
Always,
Lisa Marie
No comments:
Post a Comment