"I Can Ride My Bike With No Handlebars"

Okay, I never really have been able to ride without holding on, but that's the song going through my head right now, so that's the title. I need to document this somewhere, and since this blog is basically serving as my journal at the moment, you--the lucky reader--get to serve as a witness. Speaking of witnesses, let's hope it doesn't come to that. As most of you know, I'm a surgical tech (commonly referred to as a "scrub"), which means I assist doctors during surgery. I manage the instruments and sponges and medications used intra-operatively. Ever since I came back from Maternity leave, I have been assigned to increasingly difficult cases. That's fine--part of what I love about my job is that I get to learn so much every time I work. Today I was assigned to a post-op bleed; the patient had back surgery yesterday, and wouldn't stop bleeding today, so they brought her back to the O.R. When I saw the assignment, I was pretty intimidated, because I have had very little training in orthopedics--I have basically learned everything on the fly. Some of the other scrubs I have spoken with said that's how they had to learn, so I figure that I'm just lower on the learning curve. I thought about saying something to my charge nurse (the one who makes the assignments), but I didn't. It was an exceptionally busy night, and I know she made the best and most appropriate assignments with the staff she had to work with. The case didn't really go smoothly. She was a relatively difficult intubation, and I am not very familiar with the spinal instruments we used. I also had to mix several batches of thrombin and gelfoam (clotting agents) on my back table, which was very messy and slow for someone who doesn't do it routinely (by the 4th batch, I did okay . . .). The surgeon was pretty patient with me, but I knew he was frustrated, too. So we spent more than an hour trying to make her stop bleeding, although that wasn't entirely successful either. As we were closing (re-suturing the wound), the surgeon found a fairly long blonde hair on the sterile field. That's bad. That's why we wear hats, masks, gowns, clean scrubs, shoe covers, etc. After pointing it out, he threw it off the field, changed his gloves, irrigated the wound with some antibiotic solution, and asked the anesthesiologist to give her more antibiotics intravenously. We finished the stitches and concluded the surgery. The hair could have come from the circulating nurse, who is also blonde, but it was probably mine, since I was physically closer to the point where and when it was found. I admit that my hair was not 100% contained. It is fairly rare that anyone's hair is, unless you're wearing a helmet or a beard cover; in fact, most people I work with have some stray hairs that sneak out from under their hats. I have never been told that my cloth hats are inappropriate, although I do have some hats that don't hold my hair back very well (the orange hat I wore today being one of them). I don't know what will come of this. If the patient gets an infection, it could possibly be traced back to the hair on the field. If there is an adverse outcome, on some future, unfortunate date, I may be called upon to testify in a trial, and I would have to admit some fault. I really hope it doesn't happen that way, but more than that, I really hope our patient is okay. She was miserable coming in to surgery, and I want her to get better. It makes me sick to think that I could possibly contribute to a patient's death; I do what I do to help people get better. Sometimes working in a hospital sucks.