Yeah, I know yesterday was Monday.
Yesterday was also a holiday and I have something to tell you about holidays in the operating room.
For years and years and years, it was myself and a tech on the evening shift. The tech changed depending on what day it was but we had a pretty good rhythm going.
Case came in, we did it.
Case didn’t come in, we stocked and set up rooms for the next day.
Years and years and years, remember?
Holiday weeks just threw us off our game.
It didn’t matter what holiday, it impacted the schedule.
Mostly an increase in evening cases.
And also the people who sober up AFTER the holiday and realize they need medical intervention.
Surgeons were hot to get out of time trying to squeeze in just one more case. Because they didn’t want to dump on their partners and they had a plane to catch, naturally.
And if we were going on a personal holiday, you know, vacation? Bets were off and the evening shift was reliably chaotic.
Some of the worst cases I’ve ever done were on holiday weeks.
There was the time the bed malfunctioned on Labor Day night and went into such a steep Trendelenburg I worried that the CRNA was soon to have a lapful of patient. It took two of us, the tech and me to hold the patient up so that this wouldn’t happen. And I scrabbled for the phone and called the anesthesiologist who came in to help us get the patient on the table.
That was a close one.
Or the time we had to practically do a hemipelvectomy for necrotizing fasciitis. In late December. I’ll let you guess which holiday this was adjacent to.
Odd things happen during holiday weeks.
All we can do is work the schedule and try to finish before day shift arrives.
Dispatches from the Evening Shift 