I once knew a surgeon who practiced at a certain hospital where the workforce was fully unionized. He told me that the OR personnel routinely walked out when it was time to take their breaks. Relief was supposed to appear, but often it didn’t. So the operation just stopped until breaktime was over. I don’t think I’ll be going there to have my gallbladder out!
When we are doing a long surgery, the scrub techs and nurses have to leave to have their breaks according to the law. This means stopping the case and a sudden hand off of the instruments to a new tech and nurse who then re-arrange everything to how they want it and the case continues. Of course this adds additional areas of potential errors and general confustion to the whole surgery. Then when the techs and nurses come off their breaks the whole thing starts again. We want to reduce medical errors, unfortunately we are required by law to increase the potential for the most serious of errors.
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Alright! Lawyers over people!
I once knew a surgeon who practiced at a certain hospital where the workforce was fully unionized. He told me that the OR personnel routinely walked out when it was time to take their breaks. Relief was supposed to appear, but often it didn’t. So the operation just stopped until breaktime was over. I don’t think I’ll be going there to have my gallbladder out!
When we are doing a long surgery, the scrub techs and nurses have to leave to have their breaks according to the law. This means stopping the case and a sudden hand off of the instruments to a new tech and nurse who then re-arrange everything to how they want it and the case continues. Of course this adds additional areas of potential errors and general confustion to the whole surgery. Then when the techs and nurses come off their breaks the whole thing starts again. We want to reduce medical errors, unfortunately we are required by law to increase the potential for the most serious of errors.