Coping With the Boredom of Anesthesia
Do occasional distractions help anesthesia providers stay sharper?
T
here's a great
deal of hand
wringing these
days about "distracted
doctoring" — the idea
that computers and cell
phones may be dividing
the attention of
providers and endan-
gering the lives of
patients. But are we in
danger of oversimplify-
ing the issue?
An ongoing malprac-
tice suit in Dallas,
Texas, is front and cen-
ter. Anesthesiologist
Christopher Spillers,
MD, is accused of failing to respond to a patient's clear signs of desatu-
ration because he was too distracted by social media
(osmag.net/epm9ht). Surgeon Robert Rinkenberger, MD, also named
in the suit, testified in a deposition that Dr. Spillers didn't notice that the
patient had critically low blood oxygenation until "15 or 20 minutes"
after she turned blue.
"He was doing something either [with] his cell phone or pad or
something," says Dr. Rinkenberger. Dr. Spillers initially denied in his
deposition that he ever surfed the Internet or posted on Facebook
while managing cases. But when confronted with a post from his
3 4 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E • A U G U S T 2 0 1 7
Anesthesia Alert
Mike MacKinnon, MSN, FNP-C, CRNA
• NEEDED RESPITE? Non-patient-related activities such as reading and conversa-
tion have been going on in the OR for decades, with no discernible pattern of nega-
tive effects. Studies suggest occasional "distractions" keep providers sharp.
Morgan
Thompson,
RN
