Occasionally, our work becomes very personal. The role of perioperative nurse became deeply personal to my family and me last year. In January 2011, my youngest brother had a surgical resection of a large colon tumor. Three months later, another brother also had surgery for a colon tumor. In June 2011, I had a knee replacement.
After some discussion, my youngest brother had surgery in our facility. My other brother chose to have surgery in a critical access hospital in my hometown. Both brothers needed open procedures because their tumors were too large to be approached laparoscopically. As a perioperative nurse, I know that factors affecting better outcomes of colon cancer include the surgeon's education, training, and experience, and the hospital's caseload.1
Our facility has about 110 ORs and performs about 200 surgical procedures every day. The critical access hospital has one OR, and I'm not sure that they operate every day. My youngest brother wisely asked a surgeon who specialized in colorectal surgery how many procedures of this type he'd done, and the answer was "thousands." My other brother also wisely asked the same question of his general surgeon and was told "it wasn't unusual" for the surgeon to do a colon resection.
Our institution can provide pathology results while the patient is still in the OR, ensuring clear margins. The critical access hospital sends their specimens to a larger nearby healthcare organization; results are known within the week.
As nurses, we may "know too much" when we or our family members undergo treatment for a health issue. We're all too familiar with how the surgical suite operates and the issues that can arise, such as retained foreign objects, unsterile instruments, and excess blood loss. The constancy of the perioperative nursing role was the one thing I and my brothers could rely on. The best facility and surgeon for a specific surgical procedure may be open to debate, but the role of the perioperative nurse is constant from one organization to another. As an educator, I work very closely with the perioperative nurses and the rest of the surgical team. I'm confident in their practices and in following the procedures and policies to protect patients and enhance operative outcomes.
November 5-11 is Perioperative Nurses Week. I want to personally thank all of you for the expertise, dedication, and advocacy you provide for all of your patients in all different settings and types of healthcare institutions.
I want to thank my brothers for giving me permission to talk about their experiences. My youngest brother was diagnosed with colon cancer, and is a year out from chemotherapy. My other brother had a very large benign colon tumor. I'm pleased to say that both brothers are doing very well. As for me, I had an excellent outcome from the knee replacement procedure, am pain free, and was able to return to work a few short weeks after surgery.
Elizabeth M. Thompson, MSN, RN, CNOR
Editor-in-Chief Nursing Education Specialist Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn. [email protected]
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