Operating Nurse Quotes & Sayings

Another common practice, the reps told us, was to take fancy meals to the entire doctor's office (one of the perks of being a nurse or receptionist, I suppose). One doctor's office even required alternating days of steak and lobster for lunch if the reps wanted access to the doctors. Even more shocking, we found out that physicians sometimes called the reps into the examination room (as an "expert") to directly inform patients about the way certain drugs work. Hearing stories from the reps who sold medical devices was even more disturbing. We learned that it's common practice for device reps to peddle their medical devices in the operating room in real time and while a surgery is under way. Janet and I were surprised at how well the pharmaceutical reps understood classic psychological persuasion strategies and how they employed them in a sophisticated and intuitive manner. — Dan Ariely

Teamwork may just be hard in certain lines of work. Under conditions of extreme complexity, we inevitably rely on a division of tasks and expertise - in the operating room, for example, there is the surgeon, the surgical assistant, the scrub nurse, the circulating nurse, the anesthesiologist, and so on. They can each be technical masters at what they do. That's what we train them to be, and that alone can take years. But the evidence suggests we need them to see their job not just as performing their isolated set of tasks well but also as helping the group get the best possible results. This requires finding a way to ensure that the group lets nothing fall between the cracks and also adapts as a team to whatever problems might arise. — Atul Gawande

After three hours, I come back to the waiting room. It is a cosmetic surgery office, so a little like a hotel lobby, underheated and expensively decorated, with candy in little dishes, emerald-green plush chairs, and upscale fashion magazines artfully displayed against the wall.
A young woman comes in, frantic to get a pimple "zapped" before she sees her family over the holidays. An older woman comes in with her daughter for a follow-up visit to a face-lift. She is wearing a scarf and dark glasses. The nurse examines her bruises right out in the waiting room.
And you are in the operating room having your body and your gender legally altered. I feel like laughing, but I know it makes me sound like a lunatic. — Joan Nestle

And - as a woman reconciled in her own body - I feel I can argue with anyone's god about my right to end a pregnancy. My first conception - wanted so badly - ended in miscarriage, three days before my wedding. A kind nurse removed my wedding manicure with nail-polish remover, in order to fit a finger-thermometer for the subsequent D&C operation. I wept as I went in to the operating theatre, and wept as I came out. In that instance, my body had decided that the baby was not to be and had ended it. This time, it was my mind that has decided that this baby was not to be. I don't believe one's decision is more valid than the other. They both know me. They are both equally capable of deciding what is right. — Caitlin Moran