Outsiders may know of phone use in OR
In many cases, inappropriate phone calls are more obvious to people other than the patient or the risk manager. For instance, Bonnie Russell, owner of 1st-Pick.com, a public relations agency in Del Mar, CA, says she has had several conversations with surgeon clients while they were operating on patients.
"I originally decided to work with one cosmetic surgeon because he regularly made trips to Mexico to help poor kids with cleft palates and things like that, all on his own dime. This impressed me," she says. "However, Dr. Do-Good's darker side very quickly emerged. He repeatedly called me from the operating room to talk about the need for more media exposure. It really kind of freaked me out to think that he was talking to me while operating on a patient. I mean, sure I wanted to talk to him, but not that much."
Russell says she has talked with several surgeons who seemed to think it was fine to take nonmedical calls, such as her calls discussing media exposure, in the middle of an operation. "I also had this one neurologist who bragged to me that he could be reached by phone any time, and he really meant any time," she says. "I told him that just wasn't necessary, and I didn't want to talk to him in surgery." (The editor of Healthcare Risk Management has had similar experiences in which surgeons took calls, conducted phone interviews while operating, and paused as necessary to give instructions to the rest of the surgical team.)
Source
For more on the use of phones during surgery, contact:
- Bonnie Russell, 13676 Ruette Le Parc, Number E, Del Mar, CA 92014. Phone: (858) 324-1717.
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