Usually, if we hear about medical complaints on the news, we hear about rare complications that make for salacious sound bites, or about patients making complaints about surgeons.

Did you know surgeons complain too? And their reasons for job dissatisfaction might surprise you. At heart, most physicians care about patients above all else and want to do everything in their power to help patients get better and stay healthy.

But if surgeons could create an ideal working environment, what would it look like? Read on to find out.

Common complaints surgeons make about the job

Common complaints by surgeons include bureaucratic cost-cutting that affects staffing and equipment, both of which ultimately affect patient care. Some hospital boards and medical practices have become too laser-focused on profits, cutting staff and hiring contract workers instead — workers who aren’t as skilled or familiar with procedures. Reduced staffing also leads to overwhelming patient loads, causing surgeons to feel rushed and patients to feel a lower level of attention and care.

When surgeons are rushed and their OR is short-staffed or filled with outdated or faulty equipment, mistakes are bound to happen. Some surgeons have complained about ceiling leaks, clogged sinks, and roaches in the operating room. Dangerous incidents include anesthetizing the wrong side of a patient for hip replacement and a patient waking up in the middle of brain surgery and trying to sit up.

In addition to being short-staffed, overwhelmed with patient loads, and being forced to use subpar equipment under less than sterile conditions, surgeons also complain about distractions in the OR caused by poorly trained med students, new physicians, and medical staff.
If you’re a healthcare worker looking for some helpful insider information to make the surgical setting more efficient, check out this article by Kevin Jubbal, M.D. titled “Surgery 101: Operating Room Reality & Expectations.” Here is more on “Patient Safety in the Surgical Environment” including a safety checklist created by the World Health Organization, published by The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists.

Proper patient positioning is fundamental in surgical procedures

Regardless of the procedure, every surgeon requires proper patient positioning so that the patient is easy to maneuver without risk and the surgery site is easily — and safely — accessible.

This research on “Patient Safety in the Operating Room” focuses on neck-up procedures such as plastic surgery, but highlights the importance of patient positioning, stating that “poor patient positioning can result in a more challenging procedure and can produce less satisfying results.”

It’s vital that the surgical team considers the patient’s medical comorbidities and their limitations on positioning. According to published research by doctors Warren A. Ellsworth, IV, and Ronald E. Iverson, “Patients with severe osteoporosis are predisposed to bone fractures even after a minimal insult such as rolling from the operating room table to the bed.” Also, obese patients can more easily sustain nerve injuries if not positioned carefully.

Game-changing surgical innovations

This is why procedure chairs are an important patient-first innovation, allowing patients to remain on a single surface from intake to discharge — a single surface that easily transitions to multiple positions for better surgical access and patient safety and comfort.

Several of our linked sources mention a “Bovie,” so we want to make sure its definition is clear. Science Direct states, “The electrosurgical unit, or Bovie, is a surgical device used to incise tissue, destroy tissue through desiccation, and to control bleeding (hemostasis) by causing the coagulation of blood.” This electrosurgical unit got its conversational name from Dr. William T. Bovie, the American scientist who is credited with inventing the electrosurgical generator in 1926.

Avoid doing these things in the operating room

Closely connected to “things surgeons complain about” are “things to avoid in the operating room” because many of the things to avoid are precisely the things surgeons gripe about.

Here are just a few behaviors to avoid:

1. Be late. Or, arrive on time but don’t be ready with your gloves, gown, scrubbing-in protocols. Make the surgeon and patient wait on you.
2. Be useless. Stand around watching the entire process. Don’t offer to assist ahead of time so you know your role and can execute during surgery.
3. Be distracting. When you look away from the field, it’s human nature for those around you to look away too. They want to know what’s so interesting that you’d lose focus on the patient.
4. Be disruptive. Talk a lot, hum or sing, chew gum, pass gas, drop utensils, wear rings that harbor bacteria and tear through sterile gloves.
5. Be contentious. Arguing with the surgeon during a procedure is a good way to get banned from working with that surgeon again. To be successful, the surgical team has to be just that — a team. Advocating for the patient is always a good thing, but there’s a time and a place to make suggestions about what you would do differently.
   For a lighthearted, conversational read that still covers all the crucial points on what to do and what not to do, Geeky Medics offers this article on operating theater etiquette.

Medical seating solutions for your surgical facility

Champion’s surgical and transport procedure chairs help alleviate some of these complaints and distractions by being a stretcher and chair all in one. What’s even more helpful — the products in our TMM Collection are all cordless and battery-operated for design efficiency and a streamlined flow.

Depending on your facility’s needs, choose from Champion’s TMM3, TMM4 PLUS, and TMM5 PLUS. Each procedure chair provides innovative seating solutions to optimize patient flow from admission to discharge, all on a single surface.

Champion products can help you minimize risk, maximize space, and enhance productivity.

Want to learn more? A Champion team member would be happy to help you evaluate the TMM Collection for your facility.

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