What happens inside the operating room that surgeons don't tell you?

That it’s the nurse who runs the room. We are YOUR (the patient’s) advocate while you are asleep and unable to speak for yourself. We make sure everything is in the room that is required for your surgery (instruments & supplies), we make sure there are no hazards (a cord that could trip someone), we make sure there is nothing that will harm the patient, we watch the students, reps, whomever to make sure they don’t contaminate anything. AND we can tell the surgeon to stop at anytime if there is a concern of any kind that needs to be checked out. We make sure you are pisitioned properly so no injuries occur, and do the prepping of the surgical site with a solution. We are a TEAM in that room and I like to call them my FAMILY also. We trust each other and look out for each other. That being said, we also argue at times as do family members. That doesn’t nearly cover what a surgical nurse (called a circulator) does in the OR. Many think we just sit the entire time……. And quite honestly, I’m not sure most surgeons know what we do other than answer their phones and put on their favorite Pandora station. :-) (somewhat kidding)

But I love my job.

I think most people would be appalled by what happens in the OR simply because they have these sanitized tidy images of their loved ones being gently worked upon.

The reality of many procedures is they are gross, messy, violent affairs. e.g. Replacing a knee joint requires power sawing chunks of your bones away, then hammering in the replacement parts. Or watch a chest get sawed and cracked for heart surgery. Such things can seem rather brutal to the uninitiated!

Reminds me of the time my wife took our son with a broken wrist to the ER. She was standing there soothing our child, and the orthopedist explained he needed to reorient and align the broken bones before casting. “You can stay if you want, but you have to go over and sit in the corner.” She did, and he proceeded to tug & wrench on the wrist to get it in place. She said his advice to sit down was good, as watching this violent and unnatural (yet totally correct) procedure occur with our son was rather shocking.

Normal for medical professionals is shocking for the uninitiated.

Also, most people imagine the OR as a sacred temple where only YOU the patient have ever entered for your (hopefully) once in a lifetime event. No, its a place where the surgeon and everyone else comes to nearly every day, replacing hundreds of joints a year (for example). It is a job, it can be very routine, and people in the OR pass the time (often hours of time) doing their jobs in the OR just like any other work. They chat, tell jokes, talk about tv shows and their upcoming vacations, etc.

So I think it is hard for some patients to reconcile their hyper-charged emotional thinking about their very important surgery when confronted with the pedestrian reality that they are just another line on the ToDo list for people doing their daily normal job. Mind you, I’m not saying people just doing their jobs equals not caring or not compassionate. The best medical professionals are those who never lose sight of the fact that the things they know as routine are often spectacularly unique for the fragile complicated space of patients’ minds.