Only the Strong Survive

I have probably come across as being very emotionally driven when it comes to working in surgery. Having compassion for your patients, coworkers, and yourself is an important part of being successful in the operating room. However, don’t let my soft and squishy touchy-feely drivel fool you. Underneath this sensitive exterior I have a spine of steel.

Before I started clinicals, my instructors told me time and time again:

There is no crying in the OR!

Going into clinicals, I got the distinct impression that a lot of surgeons were dicks (partially true) and that if you showed any signs of weakness they would chew you up and spit you out (also partially true). The OR was an incredibly scary place, yet also a place where incredibly cool things were going on and goddamn it, I wanted in! The anxiety caused by these horrible impressions of the OR made it feel like passing clinicals would be akin to climbing Mount Everest, but I hadn’t suffered through Microbiology and Pharmacology just to fail from being intimidated by a crabby surgeon. No freaking way.

I will admit. I almost cried once. The funny thing was that it had nothing to do with anyone being mean to me. Our surgical tech program was extremely intense and errors were highly frowned upon (which is to be expected in our line of work). When I started my first rotation, I was a just slightly overwhelmed. I made some rookie mistakes, and began to fear that my future in surgical technology might be at stake.

After a particularly tense meeting with my adviser, I walked into a case that turned into a complete disaster. The surgeon decided she wanted a clean and a dirty set up with the existing instruments midway through the case and my preceptor and I were scrambling to put something together. At one point, I grabbed something off the wrong table and my preceptor stopped me before I handed it to the surgeon. I had made a mistake and I started to panic. “Oh my god. They’re going to kick me out!” I could feel my eyes welling up and I bit my lip hard beneath my mask hoping the pain would distract me enough to keep the tears at bay. Thank god, it did. The circulator took one look at me knew something was wrong, but we were still working like mad to get the case done so discussing it was out of the question.

I held it together until the case was over and I was left to tear down. I thought everyone had left and let the tears fall as I loaded my instruments onto the case cart. Unbeknownst to me, the circulator had returned to make sure I was okay and I totally lost it as I explained my fears to her. Come to find out, my preceptor hadn’t even noticed my distress! My circulator and preceptor assured me that I had done fine and that if there was any question about my performance they had my back. They also gave me credit for keeping it together until the case was over. It was exactly the trust and understanding I needed at that point in time and I am eternally grateful to them both.

As I progressed in my clinicals and into my career, I was told over and over again “Don’t cry. Don’t show any signs of weakness” and I did just that. If someone was a jerk, I just shut my trap, handed over what they asked for, and stayed out of their way. My stoic nature was mostly perceived as me being the “strong and silent type,” (HA!) but it got me on the good side of several surgeons who were known for being particularly hostile. (I’m not saying you shouldn’t speak up if a surgeon is being verbally abusive, but getting bent out of shape over someone who is just generally crabby is a different story.)

The operating room is a high-stress environment. There are strong personalities everywhere. There are life and death situations around every corner, and remember: hospitals are businesses. Like any business they will want you to do more with less to improve that bottom line, so there’s one more source of stress added on to the pile. It’s totally okay to get stressed out. It’s even okay to cry, BUT there is a time and a place and that time isn’t during surgery and that place isn’t anywhere on near the OR. So if you’re prone to tears, do whatever you need to do in order to get it out of your system before you step into that OR. Watch Steel Magnolias while eating a pint of ice cream. Listen to Coldplay in the rain. Watch Sarah McLachlin’s ASCPA commercials on a loop. Whatever floats your boat.

Until next time, stay sterile.