The Best of Paula Watkins
Some seriously funny stuff goes on in the OR.
W
hile our favorite columnist
rehabs from double knee replace-
ment surgery, we ducked into our
archives and blew the dust off of some of her
wittiest wisecracks.
• Patients are funny. Sometimes they even
mean to be.
• Leading your staff while standing beside
them works much better than leading them
while sitting in your office.
• Pain is not normal. If it were, it wouldn't
be called pain.
• You know you're in for a rough time at
work when your manager returns from San
Francisco and keeps talking about her tour
of Alcatraz.
• Unless you're a physician, the OR isn't the place to unleash a rav-
ing, screaming, obscenity-laced torrent in response to surgery's more
difficult moments.
• Your mouth may say one thing, but your eyes can truly express
what you think of a person.
• You might be an OR nurse if you can look at a tissue specimen and
start to plan what you're going to cook for supper that night.
• I love how on TV there's always a ready and empty make-out room
for the dreamy surgeon and his top-notch co-workers. In real life, if
there's an empty room, it's full of equipment and junk that should've
been carted out before the last world war.
• HD has made the trip from our living rooms to our operating
1 2 6 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E • M A Y 2 0 1 6
Behind Closed Doors
Paula Watkins, RN, CNOR
A visit from the
accreditation
surveyor is like
paying someone
to beat you up.