I am sure that you have seen ORs on television. Where the music matches the general chaos and mood of the room. Hard rock for orthopedics, classical for cardiothoracic, jazz for neurosurgeons, and so on.
This is, of course, complete balderdash. There are orthopedic surgeons who listen to rap, there are ob-gyn who listen to showtunes, and more. No specialty is assigned a music genre.
Oh, sorry, Dr. X, it looks like you want to be a urologist and you are in a punk band in your spare time. Tough luck, urology is assigned comedic songs. Them’s the rules.
No, it does not work like that.
However, some surgeons do not care what the room listens to and will ask the patients what they want to listen to as they go off to sleep. Only to change it to what the surgeon wants after induction of anesthesia.
Rarely do you have silence in an OR during the day.
I have and will turn off music when the situation at the field is getting kind of tense. That usually means that the surgery is not going as planned and the surgeon is getting snappish. I will turn it down first, I am not a monster.
However, at night, the radio is off. The surgeon and the staff just seem to focus better with no music.
I still pick cases and prepare to room to my favorite focus song because I am invariably the first one there.
But after the patient comes in the room, it is go time. Our job is to get the patient safely through surgery and into the recovery room.
Only one surgeon in all those night call cases has called for music. The rest of the time we focus on the job at hand. And listen to music in the car going home. Well, I do and I presume everyone else does to.
Like adults.
Dispatches from the Evening Shift 