Two weeks ago, my girlfriend was operating on a patient when quite suddenly a nurse entered the Operating Room. The nurse said nothing, approached the operation table, and stopped. And without saying a further word, she simply stood there — watching.
The silent (and uninvited) bystander made my girlfriend pretty nervous, so she asked what this was all about. The answer was unsatisfying, and even settling —
“It’s rather calm in our department right now, so I decided to go watch you surgery instead — find it very interesting.”
If you know my girlfriend (and you partly do), then you know this was the wrong answer. First of all, leaving your department “because it’s rather calm” is extremely irresponsible in a hospital, and secondly, entering an OR without having talked to the surgeon beforehand, while not being an OR-nurse, and then standing there as if you are watching TV, is so pretentious and wrong, that the nurse was lucky not to be within biting distance.
My girlfriend sent her away in controlled anger — she was operating after all.
But when the operation was over (and this particular patient was saved), she looked for the nurse, found her, and talked to her.
About surgery not being a TV show, about the responsibilities of the hospital staff, about the sheer disturbance an uninvited guest oozes into the OR, and about the stress she gave my girlfriend, and hence the risks she ignited to the patient.
The nurse still did not understand, and asked whether she could come watching the next time.
She could not.
SOURCES: Diseases of the kidneys, ureters and bladder, by Howard Atwood Kelly, New York, London, 1922 (© public domain).
