Over the next few months, Dr. Shenker will be profiling members of the TCSC staff team and the incredible roles they play in the day to day operations of the clinic.
It’s not just any nurse that would put her finger in a belly button for me. It takes a special nurse to do that…
Most of the patients who walk out of the Cosmetic Surgery Clinic after their successful operation take the time to thank the recovery room nurse who took care of them after the operation. They often thank the anesthesiologist for doing such a great job painlessly putting in their intravenous line. They thank Ange, our operating room manager, who always holds a patient’s hand as they drift off to sleep, putting beautiful dreams in their head so they enjoy their time asleep while we work. Sometimes patients will take a moment to say thanks to the patient coordinator who organized their journey through the clinic. Sometimes they even thank me, the surgeon.
Sadly, there’s one person who takes care of the patient during the most critical times in the operating room who rarely gets thanked or recognized by patients. That person is the scrub nurse.
Not sure what a scrub nurse is? Let me explain what they do and how important the scrub nurse is in an operating room like ours at the Cosmetic Surgery Clinic.
First of all, let’s call our scrub nurse by her name. Her name is Patti. Or “Patti Cakes”. Or just “Cakes”. Sometimes when I’m feeling nostalgic for my 
french Montreal roots, she’s “Patate” (that’s French for potato, but don’t tell her!)
Every day in our operating room, Patti stands right next to me or directly across from me. We literally work 6 inches away from each other, eight to ten hours a day, three or four days a week, all year long, with a patient asleep and opened up and vulnerable on the operating table in front of us.
For the uninitiated, the job of a scrub nurse may appear to be limited to handing instruments to the surgeon when asked for them. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Patti provides an extra pair of eagle eyes, a skilled set of hands, and most importantly, an extra very active and very clever brain that I can rely on for an opinion or an idea at any time during a procedure.
Patti’s job starts well before the operation does. She makes sure that the instrument trays are accurately packed and that they are ready for surgery. She goes through our “pick list” which means she makes sure that every last piece of equipment we’re going to need is functioning, clean, sterilized and available.
Patti then helps with the patient orientation to the operating room, positioning on the operating table, and the surgical draping to make sure everything stays clean and sterile.
All of those jobs are important, but it’s actually the time during the operation when Patti shines the brightest. Any nurse can hand a surgeon an instrument when asked for it. It is only the most special nurses that understand each operation so intimately that the next two or three instruments the surgeon will require are ready and at hand before the surgeon even knows he or she needs them. In fact, while we’ve never tried it, I’m fairly certain that Patti and I could get through an entire complex operation without either of us saying a single word out loud. Patti knows each step of each operation so intimately, that I have no doubt that I could proceed from the first incision to the last stitch without asking Patti out loud for a single thing. Whatever I needed would be ready before I needed it.
So what does all this have to do with Patti putting her finger in a belly button for me?
It’s simple. During a tummy tuck, the dissection under the layer of skin and fat is usually quite straightforward, and it can often progress fairly quickly. Here’s the catch: At some point as the dissection progresses up along the abdominal wall, the stalk of the belly button gets in the way. Lord help the plastic surgeon who gets the “dissection fever” and accidentally transects the belly button stalk without realizing it’s there. I’ve never done it, and I hope I never do. But one of the key ways that I stay away from this particular disaster, is that Patti keeps her finger in the belly button and gives me a countdown as I dissect. “You’re still far away,” she says….then “…3 centimetres away”… then “…2 centimetres away”….then “STOP”. Patti is my belly button bodyguard.
So next time you visit an operating room like ours at The Cosmetic Surgery Clinic, make sure to save a few kind words for Patti. At first glance, it might seem like she is in the operating room to help me. But it’s really the patients and their belly buttons she is protecting.
Thanks Patti Cakes!
