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Prepared for you by Marie Paulson, RN Nov. 1998 Information for new
nurses (click here)
Down Memory Lane: Revisiting the past of countless internet OR Nurses…….. Remember when we
couldn't wear nylons----reg. Or pantyhose.....cyclopropane territory!
Does
Kathleen B. Gaberson
wrote:
Oh, yes. My
era, too. Except my shoes were white Clinics with copper nails in
the heels -- someone
I also remember learning
how to thread those French-eye needles with fear and trembling; was it
Along the same lines
I came home from a long day of TURPs and while hugging my darling
honey
Ether........ And still available at some Yard Sales, I hear!! While at an antique
show in Raleigh a few years ago, I was privileged to see a full-fledged,
antique "Vampire Killing Kit". NO JOKE! It was obviously made
by an extremely talented craftsman in the
Trivia Note:
Vampires were not as we have come to know them....actually pedophiles were
(and are,
I can remember one
of our surgeons/inventor using a sodering gun he designed as a bovie. Did
we
And the wire suture
we used for hernias was on a spool like thread. If you didn't hang
onto it, it would
Then there was the
Valentine which was a v shaped (huge) jar with an outlet at the bottom
into which we poured the correct irrigating solution for TURPs. We
even lost one in the laundry (who said that it
My mother was a surgical
nurse in a private ENT practice which did the tonsils at home on the kitchen
table. Her MD was trained under Chevier Jackson who invented the
rigid Bronchoscope . His
My O.R. textbook says, " First, turn on the hot plate to heat your saline. " :-) Does anyone remember
the kidney shaped x-ray films that were used intraop? Our preference
cards
Ether - the ultimate
cleaning and polishing agent
I'm glad to know
I'm not the only nurse that remembers all those things. All these memories
make me wonder why we fight so hard to protect some of today's sacred cows.
When I first started
OR nursing (as a student), we were still rolling silk suture onto "suture
boards". I don't recall much ( if any) use of atraumatic sutures.
There was a sterile "hopper" in each of the Ors that was refilled and sterilized
every week. We would keep stuff like raytec sponges, red rubber catheters
and
Change is good!!
I started in an OR
where there weren't enough of the new cautery units for every room, we
rinsed suction bottles that were glass at the end of the day, and only
one or two surgeons used atraumatic sutures. This was a city OR. I started
in the OR right out of school in 1974 - just recently (or so I thought
until our secretary told me today she was born in 1973!).
I am just nicely
past my 1/4 century in the OR and lots of these memories are very vivid
and real. How about rolling your own peanuts/dissectors? Or transfer forceps
for sterile items to be given to scrub by circulator? Jars of sterile eyed
needles in each theatre and remove with transfer forceps?
Glass specimen jars with black lids. Amsco sterilizer that looked like a submarine torpedo tube and sat out in the workroom. It would tremble and shake and I used to worry that it would explode. Does anyone still have the recipe for baking a Christmas party ham in that autoclave? Diacks (glass tubes with a tablet inside that melted) for sterilization monitors Distilling water & making saline; glass bottles with gray rubber caps; burped the bottles to test the vacuum seal?? Fan-folding and rolling the various fenestrated drape sheets and securing the bundle with twine Then making linen packs The autoclaved smell of a load of linen packs & sheets The smell of a forgotten load of packs left in the clave overnight! Counting out groups of 10 ray-tec sponges and securing the unit with a safety pin. Cleaning glass Lukens traps - yuck! Seeing my first defibrillator.
It was a Lown defib and huge - looked like something from Frankenstein's
lab!
Putting on those green keds with the black rubber plugs in the soles and then stepping on testing conductivity tester - Then the "improvement" of shoe covers with the conductive strip you had to work down the inside of your shoe Phenolic disinfectants that would take the hide off a cow Making penrose drains - gauze wicks, safety pins and all Making vaseline gauze for dressings Cleaning, testing, powdering, and wrapping gloves Ether - the ultimate
cleaning and polishing agent Cleaning red rubber endotracheal tubes - testing
Reloading the Von Petz intestinal stapler. We called it Moby Dick because it looked like a whale. I blessed the day God invented the GIA & TAs Setting up 3 bottle
Wangensteens for surgeons who would not use the new-fangled Gomco suctions.
Here's an interesting one: I found a website called nurseceu.com which offers CE modules in all sorts of areas. Pulled up "perioperative" and picked aseptic technique as a topic and found a study guide & test which described appropriate use of transfer forceps!! As my niece would say: 'omigawd'. Are transfer forceps with BP solution in use in any clinical settings? In my experience, we first changed to dry forceps and then discontinued the practice entirely. If you've read this far, thanks for letting me share my memories with you. This is fun...remember
all the stories the "old" nurses told us! My great-aunt was a WWI OR nurse....I
remember her one and only comment about the OR was "The doctors used to
swear a lot back then....I imagine they still do that!" It has been a great
run that I wouldn't trade for the world!
I just want to take the time to thank all of you that have shared your memories, and paved the way for all of us infants in the field. When I get frustrated at the trivial, I hope to think of you, and give thanks for just how easy we have it now. THANK YOU Boy do I remember
those AWFUL rigid bronchoscopes with the tiny light bulbs!!!! What a nightmare!
I worked with a surgeon who kept demanding "turn it up, turn it up!"
We did; the light bulbs blew.....not once but TWELVE times! He just
looked at me and calmly asked "Are you girls deliberately trying to drive
me crazy?"
Oh no! We were doing
this in Southern California in the late 70s, early 80s! We had a glass
jar type item
As a "not so old
one" on the OR--only having been there 16 years I remember washing out
suction canisters
Amen for fiberoptics!
Boy, do I remember those rigid scopes that blew the bulbs when you turned
up the power on the battery box. Our chief of surgery had everyone
terrified, you know the type. The unlucky ones got to do local rigid
bronchs with him. He sat the pt. in a chair, told him to hold his tongue
out with a 4 x 8, sprayed his throat with a little Lido. and shoved that
rigid scope down his throat. Of course, the poor pt. coughed, and
he yelled at him to "cut it out." Then he told the horrified nurse
to turn up the light on the battery box, and of course the bulbs blew every
time. He cursed up a storm while we frantically changed those stupid little
Welsch-Allen bulbs, only to start all over again. I definitely don't
miss those good old days. Not just the French eye needles, but loading
wire on free needled for hernia repairs as an orientee as the surgeon bellowed
for me to do it faster!!!
There is an EXCELLENT
OR set up at Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia! It is exactly as old
pictures describe......oak Operating Table (more like a kitchen table!)
Old Instruments displayed...and, of course, the "Amphitheater" so other
physicians could observe. This, I believe, was the first hospital
established
I would also recommend the American College of Surgeons' museum in Chicago, and understand from Bill Pilling that he donated large collections of instruments and equipment to the Smithsonian Institute. For those of you who live in NC, there is an antique dealer in Durham who specializes in scientific antiques, including medical antiques! One of my great thrills was seeing a set of dental elevators made in England in the late 1700's....with ivory handles. Beautiful! As an FYI-Pennsylvania Hospital houses the Nursing Museum which includes as Marilyn notes a vast collection of archives and surgical instrumentation, equipment, nursing collectibles etc. The Museum has regular hours and also welcomes groups. It is at 8th & Spruce Streets in Philadelphia. Also, in Philadelphia, is the College of Physicians Museum which has a very large collections of antiques, collectibles and a vast library. Both facilities are excellent and great visit for all inclusive of nursing students. Hope this helps. I remember all of the stated, and I started in the OR in "72. Our OR had 2 EKG monitors at the time, for 8 rooms, and the "big cases" got to use them............. Does anyone still make "tonsil knots from chromic suture on the end of a "tonsil clamp""? And how about ugggg,
the dirty case cart with the wet soaked mats at the door to the OR and
the inside circulator and outside circulator. And the staff had to strip
to their underwear after a particularly dirty
Ah memories!! It has been a trip back in time.... How international we are, all the U.S. memories are the same as mine as a student in Oxford U.K. . the needle boats, the formalin cabinet, the glove washing, drying, powdering, hole repairing with patches, reusing laps, making up sets according to the surgery the night before The huge water sterilizers for basins, trays etc, the heat of the room every day when we students kept these going all day, the water sterilizer for radioactive implants in heavy lead containers, the 2 hooks for lifting them out, doing chest surgery with 2 patients per room and a shared set up table in the middle for less used instruments, filling large hanging glass bottles with aqueous hibitaine for the flushing evacuation curettes, putting cellophane inside cloth masks, drums for gowns, drapes and sponges. GU tables in OR There are many countries in the world where these are still common practices. We are so lucky, and we have come a long way, I would be interested in seeing some periop writers now come up with their futuristic predictions. You can probably find one at the Mayo Medical Center in Rochester, MN. When I was a nursing student there and when I returned as a staff nurse, there was a "table" and some of the gall bladder instruments used by the original Mayo physicians. It used to be housed at St Marys Hospital but St Marys is now a part of the MMC. Except my shoes were white Clinics with copper nails in the heels -- someone else has already described them. And what about wearing scrub dresses? Those were the days before pantyhose, too. In my hospital, OR nurses actually made their own caps out of colorful print fabric, and we took them home to launder. I also remember learning how to thread those French-eye needles with fear and trembling; was it that difficult for everyone, or just me? -"Septic Room" technique,
with "Inside" and "Outside" circulators. -Going to work in stiff, starched
dress white uniforms, having to change into scrubs, then having to change
BACK into the whites AND add the
Hello from Brisbane
Australia. Remembering from Australia. Some staff members still wear home
laundered head gear, we still wear dresses although we do have pant suits
that look like pajamas. I remember in my early nursing days which was a
small country hospital in North Queensland, making my own dressings and
cotton wool balls, washing, powdering and folding the cuffs of gloves over
a small piece of gauze bandage and autoclaving them for re-use. We boiled
instruments in hot water and rinsed our hands in Zephiran and metho as
well before drying and gloving. That was in the mid 60's. How about that!
I also remember using
glass ampules with kangaroo gut or chromic, that had to be broken and then
the suture extracted Kept one as a souvenir when they were replaced
by foil packaging..... This was a Fifties,Sixties thing and I discovered
them still in use at one university hospital in the early seventies when
I got my start...
I, too, remember
sponge racks. Remember how we used to handle bloody sponges with
what nurses in my hospital called "prep sticks" -- using two prep sticks
to peel apart the layers of the sponge to open it fully before hanging
it on the rack? Thinking back on it now, I realize what a bizarre
sight it was to see all those bloody sponges hanging there. OR nursing
was not for the faint of heart even then.
Oh my, am I ever
getting old! Thanks for reminding me!
--oh the memories Thanks everyone and happy nurse's week . Doug Romer I remember some of
our anesthesiologists "grounding" themselves by poring water on the floor
where they were sitting when using CYCLOPROPANE and wrapping the patient's
mask in a wet towel to cut down
My mother worked
in a 99 bed hospital as a house supervisor. She had to check the
main boiler nightly and even do minor repairs if necessary. No wonder
she was so handy around the house!
I too have powdered
gloves, threaded the needles (and cleaned them every Saturday, methodically
placing them back in their alcohol soak tray), broken the EO ampoules and
turned the canisters upside down, fogged the OR, daily, hung the sponges
diligently on the swab rack, gelled the patients metal plate for use with
the Electrosurgical unit, and worked in a world of glass sucker bottles
and red rubber tubing, how did we ever really know what was growing in
those lumens!!! Our Orthopedic guy did his total knee replacements, (yes
we were doing them back then) with the OT table broken, as for lithotomy,
with the knee flexed totally over the break, and I would take in a large
Pyrex (glass) lid from my cooking appliances, sterilize same, and use it
for a shield from the airborne bone fragments. And yes, I have even worked
with Ether!!! For a T'S and A's list, arriving at work early, turning the
Ether Vaporizer Machine on in advance to heat up so as the drops of ether
would vaporize on touching the heated plate, and then be blown down the
pipe on the tonsil blade. We used a portable clements suction machine,
in reverse mode, to achieve this. For General
Surgery, the anesthetist swathed the patients face with cotton gauze,
over and through a metal face mask into which the ether was slowly and
methodically dripped onto the gauze. Doing Abd Hyst's. Appendectomy's,
Open Cholecyestectomies and the like with no Electrosurgical unit, tying
all the way!!! Yes, you have made me reflect, and they are fond memories
of a time gone by when we, as always, were striving for best practice.
The outcomes we strive for have never changed, just the actions in the
way we achieve them. By the way.....my name isn't Florence...... and I
still am employed full time, in my beloved Perioperative Unit.
Laparoscopic C-section
tray
For the New Nurse: Never go in search of shore line - even if the surgeon insists. When told to “cover your gonads, we’re x-raying,” never reflexively place you hands over your ovaries or testicles. Never lick the silk suture to get it through the eye of a needle. Of course you soon
learn the true meaning of “Don’t give me what I asked for, give me what
I need!
Some thoughts from many Periop Nurses to new graduates: 1998 While there are many books available to describe the mechanics of being an O.R, nurse, to my knowledge there has been nothing written to describe "what it is really like". O.R. nursing is many things, always different, always changing.... You need to be fairly innovative, at times, and to have some mechanical ability as well... It is fast paced, but sometimes, in the middle of a really long procedure, time can seem to stubbornly stand still. (you can almost visualize the healing process beginning before your eyes, and wonder if you've missed celebrating any birthdays) You certainly must enjoy working as a team, but realize that there is no captain of this ship; you are all working together! The captain does not keep the ship afloat. Even the Titanic sunk under the leadership of a great captain. External factors affect our “ship” everyday. Sometimes you need to be pretty thick skinned; surgeons can be wonderful to work with, and sometimes they are living proof that a person can live without a heart. This goes for staff as well! Realize that nearly everyone in the O.R, is a "type A" personality. Don’t eat your young. Teach others in a way that you were taught, or wish you had been. There is nothing more rewarding than the successful completion of a difficult procedure...either due to the surgery itself, to the medical condition of your patient, or to your contribution as an OR nurse. I'm glad you're considering
the OR as your career choice. I'm sure you've found a few who
have said "yuck - that's not real nursing.
Bear in mind that there are few places where a patient is so totally reliant on his or her nurse than when they are having surgery. The nurse needs to consider everything from the patient's skin and subcutaneous tissue health to their organ function to their family dynamics to their electrolyte balance to their prior surgical history to their wishes for end-of-life treatment to their range of motion to their allergies. And a few more. OR nurses have such a limited time to make a difference. Gone are the days when the nurse can do a leisurely pre-op visit the evening before surgery, chatting with the patient and his/her family about what will happen tomorrow. Our focus now has to be to get the right information quickly, plan and implement appropriate care based on that information quickly, and make the correct adjustments as quickly as they occur. OR nurses must be
good at thinking outside the box. Every patient follows a different
path, even though they may be having the same procedure as their neighbor.
The nurse who can consider all usual solutions to a problem and can come
up with several new options has the best chance of succeeding in a typical
OR.
I love the O.R.....I
am glad that I have the opportunity to work there, and I would choose it
all over again if I were a new graduate.
In addition to caring for your 50 patients, each nurse will follow these regulations: #1: Daily sweep and
mop floors in your ward and dust the patient’s furniture and window sill.
Wash windows once a week.
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