thats some balls if you wear that at work.
Luigi Mangione
A community to post anything related to Luigi Mangione.
This is not a pro-murder community. Please respect Lemmy.world ToS.
"What's wrong with Mario?? Dave has a Starwars cap and no one's griped about it!"
I see you have your plausible deniability lined up. 👍
Yea but he just ratted out Dave and now nobody gets fun hats :(
Expected outcome. Then I go to HR to complain that the second I show up with a fun scrub cap, they take away fun scrub caps in a decision that's clearly targeting me personally.
Don't go to HR go to lawyer for discrimination.
...if I'm not careful I'll get Nintendo's attention, and then I'm fucked!
The hospital will get Nintendo's attention. You're wearing the cap while on duty for official reasons.
They'll be the ones fucked. You might get chewed out.
You might get chewed out.
I was hoping you'd reply with this gif. 😁
I like it.
Out of curiosity what does a surgical tech do, is it like pathologist assistant? I'm wrapping up my med lab program myself. I've got a background in histo and might end up doing quick TAT H&E slides mid-surgery or tissue grossing. Either way sounds like a cool profession!
The short version is we're the surgeon's removed. Before a surgery, we pull all the instrument sets and sterile supplies needed for a case; open those items to create a sterile field, and organize that field so that it can easily facilitate the actual case. Just before the case, we'll help position and sometimes (this is usually nurse territory) prep the surgical site on the patient.
During the case, passing instruments to and from the backtable/mayo stand is our bread and butter... if you've seen TV shows about the OR they always have this scene where the surgeon says "scalpel" and holds his hands out expectantly. The hand the comes out of the corner of the screen with a scalpel is me. ...except if they actually have to vocalize "scalpel" you've already fucked up - more realistically they'd jump on the opportunity to say something snarky like "You awake over there, bro?" ...generally we need to know surgeries well enough to anticipate the expected steps. Do your job well and the surgeon doesn't have to ever actually ask for anything cuz it's already in their hand. We also handle specimens and assist with certain surgical actions like retracting tissue, clipping bleeders, suturing (sometimes... most surgeons like to do the suturing themselves). The whole time we're monitoring for breaks in sterility... like a case I did today, I noticed the surgeon had a tiny hole in his glove, so I called him out - didn't break skin, so the surgeon was fine, but at some point in the case, something got contaminated, but we don't know what, so that patient got extra antibiotics and will be more closely monitored for infection.
After the case, we again help move the patient, then tear it all down, set the instruments up to go down to sterile processing, clean the room up, and open for the next one.
This video (fair warning: gore) does a decent job showcasing it (most surgical tech content on youtube is not great).
Elbow deep in some stranger's abdomen is 'just another Tuesday'.
It's a cool job - I'm especially lucky to have it, cuz when I enlisted I was was just randomly assigned to the military's version of it... could have just as well been put into any other job in the military. I'm a civilian now, and using my GI bill to go to nursing school - crossing over to the dark side soon! Hoping to stay in the OR though, just as a nurse instead of a tech.
Pay is okay... I've been at it for a decade, and am up to $24/hr. Nurses make a lot more than we do, so I generally don't advise people bother with paying for a civilian surgical tech school when they could get an associates in nursing instead - similar prereqs, not that much more of a time commitment to graduation, but way higher earning potential.
Also it hurts. My back, hips, knees, and ankles are pretty well fucked. We almost never sit except on our lunch break, and standing in the same position (or contorted pulling some dude's liver away from the surgeon for hours) causes lots of degradation over time, so it's kind of a shitty job to shoot for as a long term option. Hitting that decade mark is more a result of me procrastinating than anything else - idk why any scrub tech sticks with it long enough to retire from it, but people do.
I’m wrapping up my med lab program myself.
If you end up working in a hospital lab, the OR would probably let you sit in for a few cases if you ask. Especially for shit like thyroid cases where we send a shitload of frozens to lab just so you can see our end of bringing that chaos to you.
I’ve got a background in histo and might end up doing quick TAT H&E slides mid-surgery
You're probably already familiar with Mohs procedures, but if not, you sound like you'd be golden for that. They slice the specimen along the entire diameter and screen the full surface of the wound for cancer - as opposed to just checking margins. ...then again, that might be the kind of thing you're leaving if you've got a history in histo... I have no idea what the breakdown is of who does what in the lab setting.
Super interesting read, thanks.
Also, fitting username
That sounds really cool! I've done almost a decade of mouse/research histo so I'm used to full organ systems and embryos, I'm just getting used to human biopsies but its mostly the same idea. I'm really into that stuff! The only experience we have near the OR would be quick TAT frozens (Moh's) or bone marrow aspirates, our job is to make the crush or touch preps and make sure the slides are good (we also do blood, serum and body fluids for chem or heme). Then we do some analysis and send it off to a pathologist if we see something funky. Thanks for educating me on all this it sounds very interesting! I bet my fiance has a lot more interaction with you guys, she's a perfusionist and monitors the heart-lung machine during surgeries and ECMO.
That's a lot more reading than I'm used to.
Now I know what it feels like when I post text walls like this
>_>
Conciseness is not my strength.
Thankfully! That was a fascinating read, and my day is better for having read it.
Thanks!! As you've seen already, I'm happy to ramble: feel free to hit me with any questions. The OR is a pretty alien environment to anyone who doesn't work there.
Just keep in mind that as the surg tech, I'm literally the rock bottom of the OR food chain. And an anonymous internet stranger, so take this all in with the credibility it deserves (none at all!).
What do surgical nurses do in the OR?
Depending on the facility there can be a lot of overlap in the duties of an OR nurse and the pre-op and post-op (PACU, or Post-anesthesia Care Unit) nurses - the hospitals I've worked at have all taken that mixed approach; but now that I'm in nursing school, one of my clinicals was in the OR of another hospital and they seemed to have those duties completely isolated. I don't know which is the norm. Since I'm used to seeing the mixed approach, I'll talk about each one:
In pre-op they they go through all the checks to make sure you're actually good to proceed with the surgery - like going over meds to make sure you followed the preop instructions (some prescription meds interfere with anesthesia, so they need you to discontinue them up to a full week ahead of the surgery) or that you haven't had anything to eat or drink within a certain time frame (that can kill you). Lots of patient education about what to expect going into the OR, and then getting you physically ready like changing into a patient gown, starting an antimicrobial prep and usually starting at least one IV.
The OR nurse retrieves the patient from preop and brings them to the OR. Once there they'll help get you moved over to the OR bed and in the correct position - positioning is one of the more important duties for the OR nurse, since you'll be under for potentially hours and completely paralyzed, you can't detect or respond to discomfort. Even when you're sleeping normally, if your body detects too much pressure on whatever part you're laying on, it'll make a small adjustment without you even being aware of it; but in the OR even that sensation is gone, and after spending hours in the same position, if it isn't ergonomic it can seriously damage your joints or keep blood squeezed out of some tissue long enough that it actually dies. If your surgery is long enough you'll need an indwelling catheter (otherwise your bladder gets so full it can actually cause damage). The nurse is usually the one to do the skin prep. usually with betadine, chlorhexadine, or alcohol, and from there the case is in the surgeon's hands; but the nurse acts as kind of liaison between the sterile field and the rest of the OR: if something comes up and some supply item or instrument is needed that wasn't opened at the start of the case, the nurse tracks it down and opens it in a specific way to get it onto the field without contaminating on it. They're also your main advocate during the procedure - if you have an iodine allergy or something and the surgeon asks for ioban (sticky iodine-infused drape) the nurse (and tech if you have a good one) will step up to stop that from being used. Throughout the case they also chart everything that happens, which is generally their biggest gripe (tedious computer work) but still super important documentation so you know exactly what happened while you were under. Once the surgery is over, they're hands-on again, making everything that's connected to you that needs to removed (like the catheter) is taken out before you wake up since it's uncomfortable otherwise; and that the things that need to stay attached remain in place and working (like your O2 mask, IV, etc); they'll help anesthesia to make sure extubation goes smoothly, then scoot you back over to the gurney you rolled in on. They'll help you get your orientation as you're waking up (which can include restraining you as you try to throw kicks and punches), then transport you to PACU.
PACU nurses continue to orient you and mostly manage your vitals, which will be weird AF after anesthesia (part of nursing is identifying things that are 'out of range', but general anesthesia changes what normal ranges are pretty drastically). If you're in pain when you wake up, they'll help manage it (sometimes that won't kick in till later because you'll still have the local anesthetic working). They're big on looking for post-op complications looking for signs like blood pressure dips that could indicate internal bleeding.
Once you're stable, you'll either be discharged and good to go home; or sent to a med surg floor for extra time to recover under close observation.
robot repair
I love it, also username checks out!
It would be a shame if you ever have to operate on an evil ceo and something just goes wrong. Oops theres goes another one.
Fantastic! Super Bros energy, for real 🤩🌈