Awful

I'm an awful person. I was bringing a patient the the intensive care unit and I was looking for the nurse practitioner or resident to take report so I could get out of there. anyway, popped my head into one of the beds and it was an ECMO patient (extra-corporeal membrane oxygenation). Basically ECMO is complete support for the heart and lungs when they are not working well (it can also be used for just lung support). It consists of a pump and an oxygenator to take over both functions. Anyway... the patient was going down later today for a procedure and the nurses were wondering if anesthesia presence was going to be required or not. Sometimes procedures are done without anesthesia personnel if the patient is doing well, so I said "I hope not, they're Stable on ECMO aren't they?" I then shook my head wondering what I had said. The phrase "Stable on ECMO" is almost an oxymoron given that they patient is NOT stable thus needs the almost complete support of ECMO. I've spent too much time in the hospital.

On another note, the cardiac case I'm supervising finished early today. Which is good, but it's bad because that means our room is open for add-on cases which are always always always a mess. But our OR bed is broken so I'm hoping nothing comes. I'm a bad man.

Music in the OR part deux

So I don't know if many people at work actually know about this blog. Just a few I hope. anyway not minutes after I post the last post about music in the OR... I get an email from someone in the department. It's one of those with a million headers in the email so it's been forwarded a billion times.

Anyway... it linked to a version of the article and asked why would anesthesiologists cooperate with publicity that that makes it look like they have nothing better to do in the OR other than play music. I never really thought about it that way. We usually are busy doing other stuff. still having a choice would be nice.

On a completely random note, had a pretty decent day on Friday. Working with two very good, very pleasant residents. One paged me because our "healthy" patient had just had a run of V-Tach... for those of you who are non-medical. It's heart rhythm that's potentially fatal if it persists and is untreated. Luckily in this instance it was short and self limiting, but we were sending off some lab tests to make sure it wasn't a fairly simple electrolyte problem. Anyway I threatened the resident with a bad eval if it happened again. I told her I would note on her eval that, "Resident was good to work with, very knowledgeable, but unfortunately arrythmogenic" (irregular heartbeat-causing) She laughed.... I think she was humoring me... then again she laughs at everything.

Music in the OR

Image provided by Freefoto.com
A friend of mine sent me this link...

Are anesthesiologists the DJs of the operating room?

At my hospital the surgeons have control over the music. No choosing by me. I don't think they'd like my music anyway. Hip hop and pop is probably to contemporary for the ORs.

There is a lot of music in the ORs... You can tell what kind of day you're going to be having depending on the music. Country in the Vascular rooms, a little bit of everything in the Neuro rooms... quiet only in Cardiac... music maybe when they're closing.