ABSENT-MINDED SURGEONS

Dominion, Volume 20, Issue 59, 3 December 1926, Page 17

ABSENT-MINDED SURGEONS

The leaving of a pair of forceps inside a patient, when an operation is concluded, has long been one of the stock jokes against surgeons, but such a case as the one recently reported is in actual practice rare indeed (says “One of Them,” in the “Daily Mail”). The reason lies. .not so much in anv superhuman carefulness on the part of the operator, as in the highly organised “team-work” of an operating theatre. Nowhere, in civilian life, at least, will you find such organisation or such iron discipline as in the theatre of one of our great hospitals. there are, perhaps, half a dozen people actively engaged in the-work to be done, and each has his or her special duty to carry out —swiftly and unquestioningly, for the operator’s word is law. The hub round which the whole organisation revolves so .smoothly is the theatre sister. She it is who must preDare all the instruments and supervise her assistant and the ‘ dirty nurse” (a probationer whose duty it is to handle any unsterilised objects which none of those whose hands are actually coming in contact, with the wound’ or the sterilised instruments mav touch). She must know and follow everv stage of the operation, and have ready in its turn every instrument required. ... . Every swab of gauze that is plugged into the wound, every pair of artery forceps that is swiftly clipped on to a bleeding vessel—and only those who have seen an extensive operation can realise the amount of. ironmongery that mav be used in this way—must be counted and accounted for at the end. , Her brain, in fact, must work m two or three water-tight compartments simultaneously, and how efficiently it does so is abundantly proved bv the rarity of any mishap occurring through her forgetfulness.