One Year
The other day I was thrown into a room with a case I’d never done. I knew the anatomical vicinity of where we’d be, but that was about it. Before we started opening, I pulled my circulator aside and warned her, “Just so you know, I have no freaking idea what we’re supposed to be doing.” Not missing a beat, she replied “Me neither.” Awesome…
This led to us trying to surreptitiously Google what the heck this procedure was and hopefully, get some pointers on how to do it. To make matters worse, it was a “possible” case. This means, the surgeon could approach the offending body part from a number of different ways and we had to be ready for ALL OF THEM. Do you know how fun it is setting up a case you’re completely unfamiliar for three different scenarios when you don’t know how to set it up for ONE? I’ll give you a hint: not fun at all.
The surgeon came in and I tried to wheedle information out of him without totally alerting him to the fact that I had zero clue of what was happening.
Me: “So Doctor, is there anything specific you’d like me to set up for the case?”
Doctor: “No, just the regular set up is fine.”
Dammit. Dammit. Dammit. I’m sure the regular setup would be fine, if I knew what that was. With no help from anyone, I made some educated guesses and prayed for the best. And you know what? The case went great. I didn’t have everything exactly right on the set up, but I had the right instrument pans so I could grab things as needed. After all of my inner turmoil and cursing the charge nurse for my room assignment, things turned out totally okay. No temper tantrums. No major delays. No poor results for the patient. It actually looked like I hadn’t bullshitted my way through the case.
I remember, as a clinical student, being terrified of the sheer number of procedures there were to learn. Even simple cases like inguinal hernias seemed overwhelming because each surgeon did them differently. Every preceptor that worked with me was subjected to the same inquiry:
When will I finally start to feel comfortable in the OR?
The resounding answer was: one year. Allow me to clarify-in one year you won’t suddenly metamorphose into god’s gift to surgical technology, but you will start feeling secure in your practice. You’ll start walking into cases not feeling like a complete doofus. You’ll be put in a case you’ve never seen before and not have a massive anxiety attack. You’ll have the confidence to walk into a room and know that sometimes, your case might not be pretty or super smooth, but it will get done and everyone will live through it (even though the doctors might act like it’s killing them).
As I left to take my cart to the decontamination room that morning, I thought about what I’d done to make my case successful. It suddenly dawned on me: I am just coming up on my one-year anniversary of being a surgical tech! My preceptors were right. It sounds hokey, but it’s true. Something happens at the one-year point in a new tech’s career. There’s a weird inner calm that permeates your psyche. It’s like all of the cases and experiences from the past year are planets in a solar system, and when you hit one year, all those planets align into an “Aha!” moment and you realize, “Oh my god. I actually know what I’m doing!”
Granted, it’s not all unicorns and glitter every day after you hit the one-year mark. There will still be cases to learn, new technologies to figure out, and bonehead mistakes to make. Just make sure you take time to bask in those moments of calm when you feel like an OR rock star because, seriously, whether you’ve been in the field one year or 30, you worked your butt off to get there and you deserve it.
