Dr. Heidi , who is supposed to be keeping medical standards in province up to standards seems instead to be obsessed with :
1) Doctors not talking about hockey in the O.R.
2) Whether or not she is named after an aquatic mammal !
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The O.R. doesn't agree with Dr. Heidi...
What it could have been !!!
TrevorHennessey • 3 years ago
As a Canadian Anesthesiologist here is a letter I submitted to the BC College of Physicians and Surgeons.
The news agencies have apparently discovered your comments in the December issue of your quarterly report regarding hockey talk in the OR.
As an FRCPC trained Anesthesiologists I am rather astounded by your comments. Regional and local anesthesia techniques are routinely used in our everyday practice and effort is made to INVOLVE the patient in non-medical conversation to ameliorate the stress and anxiety of an operation. Occasionally I even give the patient my portable phone so they can call their family in the waiting room to let them know that the operation has started and that things are going well! Imagine lying on a hard bed, in a cold room with a drape in front of you blocking all view of what is going on and you hear nothing other than the beeping of the ECG, the sound of the suction, the buzzing of the electrocautery (with associated smell of burning flesh). The surgeon and surgical team was not talking about their recent divorce or other similar topic or about other patients. They were talking about hockey, the national past-time of Canada. You even go so far as to state “Fortunately, this was not the case” as if to infer that it was lucky the surgeon was not distracted. Every surgeon I have ever worked with is fully capable of performing their work while holding on a conversation and this can actually allow things to progress smoothly. OR teams work together for 8-24hrs in a row, every day for years on end. Surgical teams are not robots and to bar any non-surgical talk for 8-10 hrs of the day, every day of work for the rest of these teams lives is unreasonable. At critical moments or during a crisis of course all small talk is stopped but I propose to bar non-medical conversation could result in a less coherent team that may work less effectively together.
Just because you receive a complaint does not meet the complaint is reasonable and requires censure. The issue here is the patients perception that the conversation could distract the surgeon and this caused them anxiety. Every patient I give a local or regional anesthetic to I tell that if they are anxious to let me know as I can either reassure them or give them medication to help if reassurance is not enough. In this setting I (and the surgeon) would have told the patient that the conversation helps keep the surgeon “loose” and everything was progressing well. It is unfortunate that this did not seem to happen but I propose there are many more patients out there who would be MORE anxious by a silent operating room and should that more numerous number complain to you that they were left to lie in a silent OR with no distractions for 3 hours will you mandate we start having conversations again to distract our patients?
Dr. Trevor Hennessey
Trevorhennessey.com
As a Canadian Anesthesiologist here is a letter I submitted to the BC College of Physicians and Surgeons.
The news agencies have apparently discovered your comments in the December issue of your quarterly report regarding hockey talk in the OR.
As an FRCPC trained Anesthesiologists I am rather astounded by your comments. Regional and local anesthesia techniques are routinely used in our everyday practice and effort is made to INVOLVE the patient in non-medical conversation to ameliorate the stress and anxiety of an operation. Occasionally I even give the patient my portable phone so they can call their family in the waiting room to let them know that the operation has started and that things are going well! Imagine lying on a hard bed, in a cold room with a drape in front of you blocking all view of what is going on and you hear nothing other than the beeping of the ECG, the sound of the suction, the buzzing of the electrocautery (with associated smell of burning flesh). The surgeon and surgical team was not talking about their recent divorce or other similar topic or about other patients. They were talking about hockey, the national past-time of Canada. You even go so far as to state “Fortunately, this was not the case” as if to infer that it was lucky the surgeon was not distracted. Every surgeon I have ever worked with is fully capable of performing their work while holding on a conversation and this can actually allow things to progress smoothly. OR teams work together for 8-24hrs in a row, every day for years on end. Surgical teams are not robots and to bar any non-surgical talk for 8-10 hrs of the day, every day of work for the rest of these teams lives is unreasonable. At critical moments or during a crisis of course all small talk is stopped but I propose to bar non-medical conversation could result in a less coherent team that may work less effectively together.
Just because you receive a complaint does not meet the complaint is reasonable and requires censure. The issue here is the patients perception that the conversation could distract the surgeon and this caused them anxiety. Every patient I give a local or regional anesthetic to I tell that if they are anxious to let me know as I can either reassure them or give them medication to help if reassurance is not enough. In this setting I (and the surgeon) would have told the patient that the conversation helps keep the surgeon “loose” and everything was progressing well. It is unfortunate that this did not seem to happen but I propose there are many more patients out there who would be MORE anxious by a silent operating room and should that more numerous number complain to you that they were left to lie in a silent OR with no distractions for 3 hours will you mandate we start having conversations again to distract our patients?
Dr. Trevor Hennessey
Trevorhennessey.com
