The gown card reads “Don’t you hate following someone else’s setup. I do things deliberately.”
Nothing will throw me out of the flow of the case faster than taking over a room immediately before the beginning of a case. Nothing!
It is like when a record skips a beat. What happens to the beats that are skipped?
In the OR these beats are probably steps that are necessary for a smooth case. Things like grounding pads, or even turning on the machines. If I am dropped in a case, even one I know very well, ahem lap appy, I am probably going to forgo a needed step.
Nothing like a surgeon needing to use the bovie and nothing happens but a rude noise when the button is pressed.
And the stopping the entire case to pick that step back up? And put that grounding pad on, or attaching the grounding pad to the machine?
Excruciating.
Call it what you will: being caught with the pants down, being caught flat-footed, dropping a stitch, missing a dance step. It feels terrible.
Once upon a time, during a crash cesarean section, back when I used to circulate those, I could see that the grounding pad was plugged in, and all the lights were green. But same thing, rude noise, no electricity for the doctor. For the life of me, I could not figure out why the bovie was not working. There was a pad plugged into the machine, the bovie pencil was plugged into the machine,
However, a silver lining is that once a step has been discovered to have been dropped I would bet money that I won’t forget again. However, there are many, many steps in combination to starting a case. Drop one and all the balls come crashing down.
Yes, I am mixing metaphors.
As an illustration of what missing a well-trod step in the beginning of a case feels like.
Horrible, isn’t it?
I try to keep the ball dropping to a minimum. Being aware that this can happen is the first step to controlling the chaos.
Dispatches from the Evening Shift 