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VOLUME 19, NUMBER 43
November 3, 1972
DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA
'Every Move Counts’ in Duke’s O.R.
It's 5 a.m. on one of Duke Hospital's
surgical wards. While most of Durham
sleeps, a patient who is scheduled for
7:30 surgery is quietly awakened by one
of the ward nurses who wishes him a
good morning. Soon a patient care
attendant arrives and prepares the
patient, carefully shaving the portion of
his body which will undergo surgery and
bathing him with antiseptic soap.
The nurse checks the physician's
p re-operative orders and the patient
receives any medicines necessary for his
procedure. If he has any jewelry, hgir
pieces, or false teeth, they are collected
and labeled for return after the
operation.
The ward nurse then accompanies the
patient to the operating room receiving
desk where they are met by an O.R.
nurse. After a series of identification
and procedural checks which include
questioning the patient himself, an
attendant wheels him into one of Duke's
18 operating rooms.
When an anesthetist has completed
his task of attaching a blood pressure
cuff, administering anesthesia, and
beginning any intravenous fluids which
are required to maintain life during
surgery, the patient drifts into a sleep
which may be the most important of his
life.
The decision to operate on the
patient may have been made by his
physician and a surgeon several months
before the actual operation or only a
few days. After plans have been
completed and the case thoroughly
discussed by the doctors, the staff of
the operating room becomes involved.
While residents and anesthesiologists
are assembling, reviewing, and
coordinating schedules submitted by the
nine services which use the
facilities—gynecology, neurosurgery,
ophthalmology, orthopaedics,
otolaryngology, urology, general.
CONCENTRATION—up like Bedouin tribesmen to prevent the spread of
infection, members of an Operating Room surgical team carry out one of the
14,015 surgical procedures which took place at Duke last year. (Photo by Lewis
Parrish)
thoracic and plastic surgery-members of
the housekeeping staff are keeping the
operating suites "squeaky clean."
While medical supply assemblers are
sterilizing instruments in autoclaves and
arranging them on trays to be taken into
the O.R., administrators are doing their
part to see that everything runs
smoothly from day to day and year to,
year.
Nurses, the backbone of any hospital,
are indispensable in the operating room,
whether they are supervisors, registered
nurses, or licensed practical nurses. They
make schedules, count sponges, scrub
surgeons's hands anti help them don
surgical gowns, set up the O.R., order
drugs, comfort patients, handle
laboratory specimens, stand up for hours
at a time, assist in surgery, perform
dozens of other tasks, and still find the
time to help train future operating room
workers.
In addition to the traditional O.R.
staff, a large number of support
personnel play a larger role year by
year. X-ray and nuclear medicine
technologists, operating room
technicians, medical photographers,
educational film makers and medical
artists are among those represented.
Surgery at Duke is then, to coin a
phrase, "a big operation." Last year
alone there were 14,015 procedures,
including everything from small
procedures to open heart surgery.
The O.R. is like the hub of a great
.wheel, and the Acute Care Unit, the
Intensive Qare Nursery, the Blood Bank,
(continued on page 3)