Scrub Techs & OR Stories.

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smq123 said:
<whining> Winged!! Blade's raining on my parade, again! Make him stop!

😉

Don't worry, Blade. I'll keep myself in check. 😀 I promise.
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Hey! I thought you'd appreciate the superhero reference!

And Spiderman doesn't even wear a cape! 🙂
 
Winged Scapula said:
Although I considered it to possibly be a nursing conspiracy where fab4fan was able to type bitch and the poor medical student (smq123) could not, we had discussed removing it from the filter (its still a TOS violation if you use it to insult someone), and it is now gone.

Seems like IT chose a random time to remove it and it appeared between posts. So don't worry smq, you can type bitch all you want (sort of).😛
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I thought maybe it was the coolness of my Bob Dylan avatar that gave me the power to use the "B" word. :laugh:
 
fab4fan said:
I thought maybe it was the coolness of my Bob Dylan avatar that gave me the power to use the "B" word. :laugh:
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You mean that's not Andy Samberg? 🙂

Hot-Rod-Andy-Samberg-987.jpg
 
Holy cow, I thought it was Andy Samberg too. Whoops.
 
Whoa, wait. In the email I got, *** was the C bomb. We should make this a seperate thread and get back to bitching about the damn scrub techs and circulators.

Wait, my *** got censored, but tired's *** was allowed. Does tired have a better *** than me?
 
So, what's the deal with wearing only certain scrubs into the OR? I got into it with some nurses on a surgical rotation because I went into the OR with my blue scrubs on, instead of green. (Not the actual suite, just the hallways) The green scrubs aren't sterile, and there was no difference between me putting them on in the hospital, or wearing my blue scrubs that I wore from home. I'm wearing them in the same places, doing the same things.

Yet, one nurse decided to make it her mission to harass me to no end for doing this, going as far as to report me to her supervisor, who took over for her in harassing me. Then, when I walked away instead of telling her off, she told me I was giving her attitude for walking away. You can't win with them.

P.S. this is the only hospital where I've had the "Only our scrubs rule". Every other hospital, I've worn my scrubs into the OR, either in surgery or anesthesia, and never had any problems. Here, it was like I just took a dump into an open abdomen the way the nurse was acting.
 
Drawing Dead said:
So, what's the deal with wearing only certain scrubs into the OR? I got into it with some nurses on a surgical rotation because I went into the OR with my blue scrubs on, instead of green.
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I've been told it's because, if you wear scrubs of a different color, then it's clear that the scrubs came in from the outside (i.e. aren't much better than street clothes). Since scrubs are never supposed to leave the hospital, technically....you get the idea.

Our ophtho hospital is across the street. One of the oculoplastics guys came to do a case with the ENT guys. He was told to take off his scrubs (which are dark blue) and given a pair of purple scrubs (which the device reps wear) instead. So they do it even to attendings.

The nurse that explained it to me said that, if you wear scrubs of a different color, it "shakes patient confidence in our hospital." Which is patently ridiculous. If a patient is astute enough to even realize the significance of different colored scrubs, then they deserve some kind of award. Most pre-op patients that I've met were too busy concentrating on their upcoming operation to even really care.
 
I did 3 months of general surgery to satisfy my schools requirements. No specialty surgeries. I have almost nothing but great memories of the experience. My preceptor worked 2 hospitals.

I got along well with the scrub techs. I have fond memories of standing around the table an hour or 7, talking about childhood, telling jokes, etc. A few months after my roation ended I received an email from my preceptor who among other things told me that sometimes the scrub and surgical techs still asked about me.

The only time it became tense was my fault. We were doing a thyroidectomy. It was in December, I worked every day that month except Christmas day - and I got paged but did not answer it. It was a Sunday and we had been working a long time on this thyroid case - had sent a sample to the lab, waited and waited on a Sunday, turned out to be malignant, and the thyroid wrapped way up around to the back of the neck. It was very difficult to find a good angle to reach the almost inaccessible tip of the thyroid

The surgeon hemmed and hawwed - switched sides - back and forth - left then right then left again- trying to find a good angle to attack this - they finally asked me (most likely entirely facetiously) what side I thought they ought to operate from. In irritation I said "Just straddle the bi*% and rip it out, I wanna get outta here". Everyone laughed, but it could have been very bad.

I thought surgery was great. I can also remember one time one of the scrub nurses who married a much older guy (like my age), and use to sneak out of her house as a teenager to meet older boys was talking about some of her dating experiences - which I was razzing her about. Largely because in retrospect I found her very cute (she was very short but cute as a button), and I probably was a bit jealous I was not one of those older boys years ago. It really could have been taken as an innapropriate thing, but luckily I guess everyone liked me enough to find it funny.

SUrgery was for me one of the funner rotations, although a lot of hours - I found the nurses and scrub techs etc very fun, easy going and good people to work around.
 
The entire thing about wearing only scrubs that have been laundered in their facilities is kinda bunk.

I also have had about half of the ~15 or so hospitals I've been in require you to wear their scrubs.

They have done a number of studies that show no significant difference in infection rates with scrubs from outside and in-house scrubs.

I think sometimes people in the OR just get caught up in the "Rules" so to speak and leave their common sense at the door. I also don't think they realize that medical students, residents and PA students may work at a number of institutions where the rules may be different.
 
Chronic Student said:
The entire thing about wearing only scrubs that have been laundered in their facilities is kinda bunk.
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It's a power trip. Lots of the nurses in our OR refuse to let us wear outside shoes into the OR without shoe covers, heaven forbid you walk back there with street clothes or gasp, your white coat. However, they continue to wear whatever floweredy pink/purple/green/blue scrubs they want from home, without any retribution. Simply because the nurses want something to hold over us.
 
Dr.McNinja said:
It's a power trip. Lots of the nurses in our OR refuse to let us wear outside shoes into the OR without shoe covers, heaven forbid you walk back there with street clothes or gasp, your white coat. However, they continue to wear whatever floweredy pink/purple/green/blue scrubs they want from home, without any retribution. Simply because the nurses want something to hold over us.
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Yeah I remember at the beginning of our surgery rotation being sternly told that, technically, scrubs were only to be worn inside the hospital and it is NOT acceptable to wear scrubs from home and walk into the OR. Then when I asked, "do we have access to a locker room here" I got the run-around and finally a "well, you'll just have to figure that out."

Whatever, it's a silly rule, my scrubs aren't considered sterile to begin with and I get a new pair from the machine every day to take home. As other people have said, some people just really like having 'rules' to enforce and give little thought to whether those rules make sense...
 
Dr.McNinja said:
It's a power trip. Lots of the nurses in our OR refuse to let us wear outside shoes into the OR without shoe covers, heaven forbid you walk back there with street clothes or gasp, your white coat. However, they continue to wear whatever floweredy pink/purple/green/blue scrubs they want from home, without any retribution. Simply because the nurses want something to hold over us.
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Come on...it's like one of the few things we have to wield against you! Well, that and bomb-paging (which I don't do--yet). :laugh:

For the record, Sponge Bob/flowery/girly scrubs are impervious to germs. Not that I would know, because I refuse to wear them. But that's what I've been told.
 
It's not just med students. I'm in nursing school and during my OR rotation, the nurses treated me like crap too. I was told to "stand in the corner and don't touch anything" and then left there throughout the case. I had several years of working as a tech in the ER before school and even spent one summer working in the OR (of a different hospital than where I did my OR rotation in school) so I know my way around at least enough to know what to touch and not to touch. One day, while I was standing in the corner not touching anything, an attending asked me to tie her gown so I did. The circ glared at me but she couldn't fault me for knowing what I was doing. Then the attending had me step up to the table and stand right behind her so I could see. She proceeded to teach me all sorts of great things. That nurse was pissed though!

About the scrubs...before I had ever worked in the OR, I went to the OR one Saturday to see if some ER equipment had been left up there from an emergent case earlier. Our OR staff laundered their scrubs at home. When I was talking to the nurse at the desk, he said. "I bet it's in the room" and then started to walk back there. I followed him (he didn't have on a mask or cap and was just in the corridor) and you would have thought I'd stuck an ungloved hand into an open chest. He actually screamed at me to stop. "You can't come in here in those!!!" I was wearing hospital issued BLUE scrubs that I'd washed at home. He had on the special hospital issued GREEN scrubs he'd washed at home. Right, germs don't stick to green, I forgot...
 
bryanboling5 said:
I was wearing hospital issued BLUE scrubs that I'd washed at home. He had on the special hospital issued GREEN scrubs he'd washed at home. Right, germs don't stick to green, I forgot...
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No, no, if you had read a few posts earlier, you would have seen, it's the elmo/smurfs/dora scrubs that are laced with antibiotic material that kills germs. Green only reduce the infection (so the surgical attending/resident/student scrubbing on the case can get blamed for something, like contaminating the case). Blue scrubs are actually like a petri dish, which is why we (well you formerly, and me in 2 months) in the ER basically get blamed for alot of crap.

I forgot to mention in my post about this, the blue scrubs I was wearing were OR scrubs from another institution that I have "borrowed". Maybe it was the cross-hospital contamination they were worried about, since I have only laundered that pair roughly 10 times since "borrowing" them.
 
They demand that I gown up in this crazy white jumpsuit...I have always put the shoe covers and the hat on (like they do)...They jumped on me "you are all over the hospital, we stay here"

really??

the OR eats 3 squares in the cafeteria, gets their own pts from the floors, and go outside to their smoke breaks, but I have to war the jumpsuit??

nazis
 
chimichanga said:
They demand that I gown up in this crazy white jumpsuit...I have always put the shoe covers and the hat on (like they do)...They jumped on me "you are all over the hospital, we stay here"

really??

the OR eats 3 squares in the cafeteria, gets their own pts from the floors, and go outside to their smoke breaks, but I have to war the jumpsuit??

nazis
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You were wearing scrubs, and they made you wear the stupid bunny suit? 😕 That's crap.
 
Tired said:
Not too mention their poor adherence to basic handwashing, habit of hanging their nose over the top of their masks, and constant rubbing against the back table sterile top.
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That's so true...why do they do that? It looks idiotic.
 
Blade28 said:
That's so true...why do they do that? It looks idiotic.
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Probably because their breath is so bad, they can't stand the smell of it anymore!
 
DrDawg said:
No horror stories, but if I get an excessive amount of attitude toward myself or the student I think its grounds to let the student close all incisions.
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oh, the best is when the freakin' CRNA will stand there tapping her foot glaring at you over the drape saying, "why are you letting the student close?" I'm like, "hello? You've been sitting down for 3 hours... shut up"

There was a particularly nasty circulator I worked with a few months ago who is legendary amongst medical students for being as psychotically nasty as possible for absolutely no reason. For example, one time the patient was cold upon being brought into the OR, so I wanted to get her a warm blanket. The circulator, who doesn't like medical students touching anything in her OR or adjacent supply rooms, was out of the OR getting something, so I decided to just go into the adjoining linen room and get a blanket out of the warmer myself. She came back in just as I was walking back into the OR with two warm blankets in my hands and I swear, her eyes bugged out of her head as though in some damn cartoon. She practically spat at me, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"
And I said, "Uhh, getting some blankets for the patient."
"You can't do that. She doesn't need more blankets."
"She was cold."
"Well how would you know that?"
"She told me."
At which point the circulator gave this huge sigh, glared at me again, snatched the blankets out of my arms (and I mean, freakin' grabbed them from me) and scowling, walked to the patient to put the blankets on. I actually said out loud, "Uh... what?"
 
I've had a pretty good relationship with scrub techs and OR nurses so far, but just last week I got really pissed off at a rep from some prosthesis company. I'm rotating on neurosurgery, about to do an interspinous device placement, the OR's ready, and everyones waiting because they can't bring the patient back to the room--he wants to talk to the attending yet again about potential complications. I walk in and there are two reps in the room, getting antsy because the patient's not there. One of them turns to me and says condescendingly, "What's the holdup? Go get things moving!" I glare at him and tell him we're waiting for the attending. What a douche. 😡
 
kaos said:
I've had a pretty good relationship with scrub techs and OR nurses so far, but just last week I got really pissed off at a rep from some prosthesis company. I'm rotating on neurosurgery, about to do an interspinous device placement, the OR's ready, and everyones waiting because they can't bring the patient back to the room--he wants to talk to the attending yet again about potential complications. I walk in and there are two reps in the room, getting antsy because the patient's not there. One of them turns to me and says condescendingly, "What's the holdup? Go get things moving!" I glare at him and tell him we're waiting for the attending. What a douche. 😡
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Most reps are okay. But a few weeks ago I had a very aggressive one that was all but trying to first assist. Kept telling the attending that an obviously ill-fitting mesh should work, the attending just isn't doing it right. Then tells the attending that several other surgeons she works with are great with this mesh, and asks "Would you like me to set up a time for them to proctor you?"

Then she was all up in the field, and the scrub kept getting pissed and told her to stay back and avoid contaminating her table. The rep says "Don't worry about it. I used to work in the OR and I know what I'm doing."

Maybe that's true, but it's probably not the nicest thing to say to the scrub.

The the rep turns to me (I'm the first assist) about an hour into the case. She asks who I am. "I'm Dr. SJS, one of the surgery residents."

"Oh, just a resident... that's why I don't know you."

She was a pretty flashy dresser, and wore designer sunglasses the entire time in the OR. Which was just annoying.

It's nice when an outside force can draw the entire OR into complete harmonious hatred of an outsider.
 
Blade28 said:
Exactly.

I may not say anything at the time, but I remember every single scrub tech who's ever abused me (from med school on) and you can be sure there's no love lost between me and those people.

They'll get theirs. I believe in karma.
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(Its been a slow night, including a computer crash for several hours...)

I couldn't help but remember your post when I saw this:
 

Attachments

Blade28 said:
If you did, that'd be a first...an EM-G Surg collaboration! 🙂
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Oh no. I collaborate with one of my close friends who is a trauma surgeon. Studies, swapping stories... 🙂

And I adore the head of our trauma surgery here. He is, well, amazing. 😍


Course, I am a perversion in EM, of all the 'other' specialties, surgeons are my favorite. 🙂
 
I personally think the slapped hand thing is all about context.

If I am reaching for something dangerous that I am not aware is dangerous, such as blindly reaching toward an exposed needle etc, then that is perfectly appropriate because that would be the only way to quickly and completely stop my hand before I stuck myself. You know yourself that if you said something that would take time to understand etc, but a quick slap on the hand and the first instinct is to pull the hand back immediately, almost like the heat reaction.

If someone does it just to be a b**** well then that's different.

I also have no problem with a good natured slap on the hand, which is kind of hard to explain but put it like this. If I am friends with the scrub and he/she taps my hand it wouldn't bother me, if they are being an a$$ then yes, it would bother me.

As with most things, at least IMO, it's all about context.
 
Not really a scrub tech related story, but during my OB rotation, I had this attending who, whenever I was doing a C-section with him, would slap my hand once or twice with a set of Mayo scissors if he didn't like the way I was doing something. In this case, I didn't really mind because I knew he wasn't really trying to be an a$$, he was just trying to teach me something. He was one of the attendings that actually cared about us med students learning something. So that would be another context in which I didn't really mind getting my hand slapped.
 
Top Gun said:
Not really a scrub tech related story, but during my OB rotation, I had this attending who, whenever I was doing a C-section with him, would slap my hand once or twice with a set of Mayo scissors if he didn't like the way I was doing something. In this case, I didn't really mind because I knew he wasn't really trying to be an a$$, he was just trying to teach me something. He was one of the attendings that actually cared about us med students learning something. So that would be another context in which I didn't really mind getting my hand slapped.
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Here's an OR story which doesn't involve scrub techs so much:

As a 4th year on my first plastics elective, I'm scrubbed in on a breast case (tissue expander exchange for implants) with a real life version of one of Misterioso's heavyweights. A real old school guy with a chip on his shoulder and a killer mustache, who would just as soon eat your soul as look at you. I'm assisting him on one side, and the chief is on the other side. We're finished exposing the expander on my side and this mustachioed hero turns to me and says in his very austere and intimidating bass, "Dre, I want you to look at this. You need to learn the anatomy of the breast." So I lean in a little, look closer, and he says in that glorious, gravelly voice, "No, you can't see it from there! You're never going to learn this, are you? Look closer! No, dammit, closer!" So I lean in a little closer and a little closer progressively until this old-school surgeon-hero finally, with catlike grace and quickness, stabs the expander with the scalpel and saline squirts all over my face. As he was cackling like a demented old goblin with neurosyphilis, I looked into his glowing red eyes and knew I'd been initiated into the brotherhood. I felt my mustache grow a little and turn slightly gray. That day I set out to become a plastic surgeon and I've never looked back.
 
BlondeDocteur said:
seriously, Dre, that was damn poetic. Where you been in all of my (posting) life?
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The funny (terrible?) thing about that story is that it's absolutely true. I took some poetic license with the adjectives, but it really happened. And the whole time, I knew the guy was going to pop the expander in my face (thankfully I was wearing one of the masks with the face shields); but I also knew I needed the guy's help to get into PRS, so I had to let him have his fun. I'm not kidding about him being an old-school guy, either. He's both famous and infamous in plastic surgery circles. I'm not sure if his help put me over the top getting into integrated plastics, but if I'd pissed him off he damn sure could have kept me out.
 
DrDre311 said:
The funny (terrible?) thing about that story is that it's absolutely true. I took some poetic license with the adjectives, but it really happened. And the whole time, I knew the guy was going to pop the expander in my face (thankfully I was wearing one of the masks with the face shields); but I also knew I needed the guy's help to get into PRS, so I had to let him have his fun. I'm not kidding about him being an old-school guy, either. He's both famous and infamous in plastic surgery circles. I'm not sure if his help put me over the top getting into integrated plastics, but if I'd pissed him off he damn sure could have kept me out.
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That really was well written.

But why do you have a pic of Tupac and the name of Dre?
 
Man that was a few thousand dollars dumped in the garbage with a stab of a scalpel.... 🙄
 
Doowai said:
That really was well written.

But why do you have a pic of Tupac and the name of Dre?
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Dre's my name.

And it's a homage to those halcyon days of "California Love" and the supremacy of Death Row...I wonder how the rap game would be different if 2Pac were still around?
 
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