Before becoming a lecturer at a college of nursing in Cape Town, I was an OR nurse for many years. My OR colleagues will understand the frustration one experiences when an operation has to be delayed or rescheduled because the patient hasn't been kept N.P.O.
My own frustration and annoyance at such occurrences changed one day as I was chatting with a colleague in the tearoom of the cardiac theater at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town. This colleague had been one of the OR nurses in the theater when the first heart transplant was performed. I asked her what the world-famous surgeon was like as a person. After chatting a while, she fetched out a sheet of paper on which was printed an article he had written. It spoke volumes.
A delayed operation
The article told of a poor young boy who needed cardiac surgery. Because the operation was urgent, he'd been kept N.P.O. in the hope that he could be operated on as soon as a more urgent operation on someone else was completed.
Time wore on and late that night the surgeon came to see the boy. He explained that the other operation had taken very long and now the boy could only have his operation early the next morning.
The boy asked if he could please have something to eat as he was very hungry. The answer was no, because he had to stay N.P.O. for the operation. He tried again: "Asseblief, meneer, net a stukkie brood." Please, sir, just a piece of bread. Again the answer was, "I'm sorry, but no."
The next morning when the surgeon arrived, the boy had died.
Regrets and reflections
The healthcare team had many regrets, but the biggest was that the simple comfort of a piece of bread couldn't have been provided for a child who didn't understand why it was being denied.
The story in the article, whether true of the world-famous surgeon himself, or of some other surgeon, or whether it was just a story to illustrate a point, my colleague couldn't say. However, it drew the hospital's attention, and fasting times before surgery, especially for children, were changed, as was the booking and overbooking of operations.