High Priced Orderly

Surgery was planned for 5 pm. The patient showed up at the hospital at a quarter to. I'm not sure if he was just late or if I need to hunt down whoever told him the proper arrival time and kill them.

By the time he made it up to my floor it was already 10 minutes after 5pm. OR was already calling, asking us to send him down as he arrived. Having OR all set up and doctors waiting is not a pretty sight. Surgeons tend to be high strung anyway and waiting is not what they do best.

If it were up to me, I would have sent him to OR as is, but the hospital is picky about patients being admitted before surgery. To send a patient without all of the forms filled out is to incur the wrath of the bitchy OR nurses. I was frantically trying to get him ready. I didn't even give him privacy to undress. There was no time. I fired off questions to him as fast as I could while he stripped, but I didn't look.

After only 5 minutes, the surgeon called and said that he wanted the patient now. We negotiated for me to have another 8 minutes. 8 minutes later, the surgeon, in full scrubs, stepped off the elevator, grabbed the patient's bed and started wheeling him out. He took the stack of half-finished papers with him which were still loose. No one had had time to make a proper chart.

I don't know if this kind of thing happens in other hospitals, but it seems strange to me when a surgeon, rather than an orderly, takes a patient to OR. I wonder what kind of impression that makes on a patient. If you were a patient, would it bother you if your surgeon also funtioned as an orderly?