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T A B L E S
• Let your surgeons test-drive before you buy. More so than any other piece of OR equipment, your surgeons will want to take a table for a test-drive. Buying a table is just like buying a car: You want to drive it before you buy it. Make it your responsibility to arrange for your surgeons to visit a nearby facility that's using the table you're considering. Let your docs work the table's controls and test out its motor after the day's cases are completed.
• Follow manufacturers' recommendations when you clean your table pads. Who knew that residue from the bleach in the wipes we use to clean our tables between cases would slowly disintegrate our table pad covers? More later on that costly lesson we learned the hard way.
Go straight to the end users Probably the greatest piece of advice I can give you is to thoroughly research what your surgeons and staff want in a table. Remember, you're not buying the table for you; you're buying it for them. Take your notebook and pen and go interview as many of your end users as you can — not just your orthopods, but your OR techs and nurses as well. You'll likely find that your surgeons and staff value different things in a table.
Your surgeons want a powerful motor. They'll want to push a button and count backwards from 5 to see how long it takes to move the patient up or down. They'll want controls that are easy and intuitive to use, and they'll want those controls to be the same in each OR — even if the tables are different makes or models. Table pads? See, this is why I'm glad I went straight to the sources. I'd assumed that we'd want soft, cushiony pads for patient comfort. Just the opposite is true, I learned. Surgeons want firm,
sturdy pads so patients won't sink down when they're placing hardware or implants firmly into place. So, yes, we went with standard table pads rather than upgrading to thicker, softer pads. Also in the glad-I-asked category: One of our surgeons prefers the anterior approach for total hip replacements, so I made sure that one of our tables came with the sliders he needs for improved access to the
