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CUTTING REMARKS
John D. Kelly IV, MD
Help, My Equipment's on the Fritz
My day fades to black when technical difficulties visit my OR.
O
f the many potential stressors in
the OR, equipment
failure might be the
worst.
• The video monitor is blank.
As an arthroscopist, my
greatest fear is video failure. I insert the scope into
a knee, which happens to
EQUIPMENT HASSLES Monitor not working? Turn
everything off, and then on again. If this fails, call for help.
have an inflated tourniquet applied, only to find that there's no picture on the screen. After
inspecting the obvious — making sure the video tower is plugged in
and that every connection is intact — I resort to old reliable. Turn
everything off, and then on again. If this fails, I ask for the most experienced nurse STAT into my room. If he can't fix the monitor, then I
deflate the tourniquet, calmly break scrub and head to the chapel.
• The autoclave is busted. This is at least a 45-minute delay to run
(read: flash) the back-up set. Yes, I've never encountered a 10-minute
cycle that didn't take at least 45 minutes to complete. As an obsessive
compulsive in recovery who gets the heebie-jeebies at the mere mention of infection, the word flash instills fear into my heart. Worse, the
cycle is complete but the nurse finds a small puncture in the tray wrap.
Time for another pilgrimage to the chapel.
• The table is misbehaving. OR tables can be a surgeon's best friend or
worst enemy. We're preparing for a knee arthroscopy and the intubated patient is secured to the table, leg holder affixed to the thigh. My
final adjustment before scrubbing is to lower the end of the table so
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