Very Superstitious?

I am normally not a superstitious person. A black cat lives with me (the feline variety), the mirror on my locker is broken, and I love the number thirteen. Give me a Friday the 13th and I feel lucky. But in the operating room, there are several superstitions that must be strictly adhered to!

Many OR's have a large magnetic dry erase board on which to display the days schedule. Individual magnetic strips about two feet by two inches are used to write the individual cases. Start time, patient initials, procedure and surgeons name are the typical information written. Then the strips or cases, are arranged on the board by room number in chronological order. Anaesthesiologists, Techs and RN's have their own little magnetic strip with their names on them. When you are assigned to a room your name magnet is placed next to the corresponding case.

When a surgery is complete and the patient is transferred to recovery, the individual strip comes off the board and the information is erased. Different story if a patient dies in the operating room. Should this unfortunate incident occur, the magnetic strip upon which the procedure was written is left in it's place on the board and turned upside down. This informs everyone, especially those who may be wondering why their case to follow is delayed, what has occurred without anyone having to say a word.

What is the superstition, you ask? Never, ever, let someone turn your name magnet upside down! If you see it is so, immediately upright yourself and any of your friends. If you have enemies you may turn their name strip upside down, but I shudder to think what Karma may have in store for you

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Another strip superstition. If it is the last case of the day, and the patient has long since gone to recovery, maybe even been transported up to their room, under no circumstances should you remove or erase that strip. Unless of course you want to bust open the flood gates and have several add-ons rain down upon you. Typically three at a time.

Emergent procedures come in threes. If you do one lap appy, you can bet two more are to follow in the same evening. Same with hip fractures. Some procedures like Crani's and AAA's may occur once a day for three days. If you exceed five in a consecutive time frame, you just have to plan on doing six.

When you are scrubbing a case all instruments that have been opened for that case MUST remain sterile on your back table. If you are sure that the surgeon won't use a particular instrument, or set of instruments, or any item of any sort, and you hand it off to unsterile territory, the surgeon will immediately request said item.

If your instrument string has an uneven number of like instruments, for instance, three Kochers or seven hemostats, you must either remove or add one Kocher and one hemostat to even up the numbers. If you insist on tempting fate, and remaining unbalanced, your case will not go well for you.

There is no OR number thirteen.

If you are on call and you don't want to work all evening and night until the sun comes up, then never, under any circumstances, utter the words "Quiet" or "Slow." If you use them in a sentence such as, "It sure is quiet tonight." Or, "It's been so slow lately." You will invoke the jinx pixies and you will not see sleep's bliss until tomorrow night.

These are just a few of the superstitions I know of. If anyone out there in the medical world have any I missed, I would love to hear them!