Your OR life will be spent tracking down instruments and supplies. Some of these supplies are of the urgent nature. This may be a disposable piece that goes to an equipment to a package of sterile towels. This may be the suture that is needed after you, or the surgeon, puts a giant hole in someone to fix their problem.

We have supplies that are by themselves. We will call these one thing.

We have supplies that might come in a pair. We will call these two thing.

We have red supply. We will call these red thing.

We have blue supply. We will call these blue thing.

Now that I am done Dr. Seuss-ing up the post (I hope you got it), we have lots of supplies.

Like lots of supplies.

So many supplies.

You never think we’d run out amount of supplies.

But the thing is that each surgery needs these supplies.

99.999999% of surgeries require supplies. I made that number up but the vast majority of cases need supplies.

These are special supplies that need to come sterile. You know, so that we don’t kill the patient by using a supply that will send them into sepsis. And we might not have the capability to render them sterile on site.

The point is the OR is a supply heavy place. And the supplies need to be sterile.

I would hazard a guess that the OR is the most heavily supplied place in the hospital.

You know what other place is heavily supplied and supplies the rest of the hospital.

The pharmacy.

100% of patients in the hospital require medications at some point during their time with us.

Many of those patients require some form of IV therapy. This is fluids/medications that are delivered to a patient via an intravenous catheter. Straight into the blood stream. And these fluids/medications need to be sterile as well. Same reason.

Hurricanes Helene and Milton did a number on two factories that supply IV fluids. One in Western North Carolina and one in Florida. Guess where many hospitals/surgery centers/doctor’s offices/free standing ERs get their fluids? From these factories.

Immediatly after the hurricanes my hospital put out the bat signal to all of its employees reassuring them that the corporation had IV fluids to continue to operate and reminding us to conserve IV fluids and bags.

The hurricanes were not even been a month ago and some surgeries are being cancelled due to lack of IV fluids.

This is disappointing to patients and providers alike.

Let me tell you about the model that hospitals et al. get their supplies through. It is called just in time ordering. The hospitals et al. can’t have millions of dollars of supplies on their shelves, including IV fluids. For one thing, that is a LOT of money to have in backstock. For another, especially when it comes to IV fluids and medications, there is an expiration date where the sterility of the packaging or the stuff inside the packaging can no longer be guaranteed.

Many hospitals et al. are in trouble with IV fluid supply levels. We in the business call this kind of thing back order. As in we need the supply/IV fluid and the supplier would like to give us the thing but is unable to because of glitches like hurricanes. We’ve had a LOT of backorder for as long as I’ve been a nurse and I don’t see that changing.

Is this model sound? Maybe. Does it hit the fan when it there is a bump? Absolutely.

Does it put patients at risk? Yep.