15 years

Cross posted from The Weekend Scrub

Today I'm going to eat at Sonic.

Fifteen years ago was lying in bed reading when there was a loud noise and the house shook. I initially thought that a car had hit the house. I lived in Oklahoma City and I was three and half miles away from the Murrah Federal Building.

Within a couple of hours I was scrubbed in surgery at St. Anthony's. I was no longer an employee, having parted ways with the hospital almost a year earlier. I was part of three separate teams working at the same time on the most seriously wounded patient. I've been scrubbing for almost twenty years. I remember two patient names. This woman is one of them. (The other was named David Stapleton.)

At one point I went to see if I could help in instrument processing. St Anthony's was the nearest hospital to the federal building. (Close enough that the hospital building itself had minor damage.) Hundreds of walking wounded had found their way to the St. Anthony ER. Almost all of them had severe lacerations. The average hospital stocks maybe thirty suture trays. Luanna, the scrub in charge of processing, had her staff opening every tray we wouldn't being using that day, the GYN instrument and the like, and reassembling them into suture trays: Two hemostats, a needle holder, a pair of scissors and some forceps.

When I came out of surgery, I was surprised to find bags full of Sonic hamburgers. Someone at Sonic had figured that there would be a lot of people working a lot of hours at the hospitals who would not have much chance to eat. They made and sent thousands of burgers to every hospital in town without being asked.

Today I will say a prayer for the souls of the departed and a prayer for the continued health of the survivors and families. And I'll eat at Sonic.

Just Do It.

Cross-posted from The Weekend Scrub

This is a bit of a rant.

I work weekends. I have to be able to do just about any case that comes along. I understand that the wimps fine scrubs who work during the week are stuck in their specialties and don't have a lot of exposure to other specialties. I don't care though. There are certain cases spread through all of the specialties that every scrub working in a large hospital must be able to do. (I may make a list of these someday.) If you can't do them, go work out an outpatient surgery center, or L &D, or specialty hospital and let your position be filled by a competent scrub. Even if you don't see them every day, you gotta be able to day a crani for subdural, a thoracoscopy, an ORIF and other procedures in the "scary" specialties of ortho, CV and neuro, even if you a GYN, or Plastics or General scrub. You just have to be able to do them, or get the hell out of here.

There, I feel better.