Older guy, a resident anesthesiologist, and vague, with a good dollop of defensiveness. Nice enough otherwise. Every time we needed his attention, it took several of us repeated tries, often about the same request every case. He excused himself as having slight hearing issues. Which, if true, means he really needs a trip to an audiologist. He also complained about all the noises around him.
Which misses the point. I worked with a tech who was mostly deaf from birth, serious hearing aids. Cranky general surgeon we scrubbed for when I was training him, took me aside and ranted that a deaf scrub tech was useless, communication was key! I told him, "No one can hear what surgeons say, we just learn to know what to expect." Quite true. It did take him a little longer than some to get trained, and he eventually specialized - working with just a few cardiac surgeons. In fact, a surgeon who also had hearing issues, and a terrible mumble*. But he was very attentive, saw patterns, anticipated and read people well. He became an excellent scrub working all kinds of the most difficult cases.
The OR definitely has a lot of white noise, suction and alarms, positive pressure laminar flow, multiple voices, phone calls, pagers, and various interruptions. Learning what to hear, what to ignore, is a matter of what I call Growing OR Ears. And once grown, when taken to a different surgery, they need re-zeroing. Takes time, and attention, mostly expectation.
Everyone experiences this in everyday life to some degree. Move to a new place, the different sounds make it hard to sleep at first, as one learns what to listen to, what to ignore. Surgery is just a place where it's both harder, and more critical. I've had new people ask me, after I'd run to get several items, "How did you hear that! I couldn't even tell he was talking!" Well, I'm not entirely sure, but I was following along, and I knew what to expect, so it took very little indication. I may have discussed the probability with the scrub earlier in the day, or seen them use the same thing on the case before.
One of the scrubs I work with now has a strong Indian accent that I struggle to understand. But she does non-verbal communication quite eloquently, and writes me notes that she holds up. I keep an eye on her, and she is always sending me signals. Took a long time for us to get there, now we work together nearly seamlessly.
*The proper noun for a collection of surgeons is a Mumble.
5 comments:
To the east, in the distance, is a railroad and the sound of the evening train helps me sleep.
Rou,
One of my favorite parts of visiting Lava Hot Springs, hearing all the trains through the night. Or the trucks rumbling by my childhood bedroom as a kid, ship horns from the river... oh, my, so many sleepy sounds.
We have skateboarders who rattle down the sidewalk at night, sounds so much like a train going by, and I'm so grateful for them.
I think I have a slight hearing impairment, probably partly due to loud rock music, but also partly genetic -- both my grandfather and my father had the same thing.
It helps me to watch people's lips as they talk, however, in surgery you're all wearing masks, so my solution would be of no help.
What does help, though, is your solution of staying on your toes and attempting to anticipate needs and actions -- you are definitely a smart woman! I admire your dedication and initiative!
Class,
Indeed, the masks are a key part of the issue.
We are all trained, certainly. The clueless really don't last long, because surgeons are not shy about expressing their dissatisfaction. With anything.
In our open office arrangement here with desks that are three or four 'workers' long, it occasionally gets noisy which becomes problematic when someone is on a phone call with a customer. We need to 'shush' everyone sometimes.
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