Outpatient Surgery Magazine, providing current information on Surgical Services, Surgical Facility Administration, Outpatient Surgery News and Trends, OR Excellence and more.
Issue link: http://outpatientsurgery.uberflip.com/i/329643
BEHIND CLOSED DOORS 1 7 0 O U T P AT I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E O N L I N E | J U N E 2 0 1 4 case's details. But the marker is almost always missing or dried up, and getting a new one requires jumping through materials management's hoops. So I bring my own: and no, you can't borrow it. Don't even look at my dry-erase marker. • Gown tie cards. I always carry a pocket notebook, but gown tie cards are also great for note-taking. I turn the scrubbed-in folks around, pull off the cards and stuff them in my pockets. I'll use them for supply room shopping lists, remembering residents' and students' names, or posting SOS messages in the window. During long cases, I've even thought about making them into playing cards for a game of solitaire. • Hand sanitizer. I don't care how many times a day I wash my hands, I'm an antibacterial maniac. Is my skin dry? Yep, it looks like the Declaration of Independence. But it's clean. • Silk tape. It's the duct tape of the OR. If I need a piece of equipment to stay together until I can replace it, the silk tape (the wider, the bet- ter) comes out. There's no problem it can't fix. I've even thought about using it on my mouth in certain situations. • Mastisol. It smells good and comes in neat little ampules. It's a liq- uid adhesive, but it comes in handy should you encounter an odifer- ous wound. Pop that baby, swipe it on your mask and a stinking mess is "Mastisolized." • Schedule. Some places don't have their schedule on a big-screen monitor, which is unfortunate. When the schedule's on paper, folded up in your pocket, you can't really know for sure who's finished a case early and hiding out, so you can't page them to your room for help. • Smartphone. Calling, texting and surfing are no-no's in the OR, but it's helpful for checking spelling, translating Spanish and (most importantly) providing music. With some surgeons, an OR without tunes is a jungle OS_1406_part3_Layout 1 6/13/14 11:56 AM Page 170