The post-it reads “pulling out clots and throwing them on the floor. 1) we have to measure that blood!”
File this under the hell?
I remember this case. There was blood in the abdomen and the assisting surgeon was helping remove the clots by taking them out of the abdomen and then throwing the clots on the FLOOR.
Don’t they know the floor is lava?
Or that the clots represent blood loss and we have to measure that blood?
Not to mention that blood clot is now a slip and fall hazard? In a room full of hazards, you want to add to them?
The scrub tech said something to them and they kept doing it.
Where was I during this?
On the phone to the blood bank/On the phone calling in reinforcements/On the phone with the nursing supervisor arranging for a higher quality of care bed/Fetching and carrying for the field/Fetching and carrying for anesthesia? Who knows.
I’m a fair shake at this guestimating blood loss thing. But I can’t guestimate blood loss from clots that have been ground into the floor and walked across the floor.
Blood clots from a clueless surgeon is the latest example of why the floor is not the trash can.
Hey, I wrote that book!
I wrote a little OR book (these are kid books that aren’t really kid books, more like grown-up parodies).
My book was called ‘The 2,465 Things that I Pick Up Off the Floor: an OR Counting Book.”
At the brass tacks level, things on the floor, cords included, are a slip, trip and fall hazard.
At the next level up, and I’ll say it loud enough that everyone can hear, SOMEONE HAS TO PICK THAT UP!!!
I personally think the practice of throwing things on the floor delays your turn over, doc. In fact, I am thinking of turning my PhD dissertation project into why it takes so long to turn over a room for another patient, and how to decrease that time.
So let’s agree to not throw things on the floor?
Mmmkay?
Dispatches from the Evening Shift 