Working PACU one weekend with my favorite co-worker, we are sitting in recovery waiting for the patient to come out. Watching our favorite show on the PACU computer. When we get an urgent call to PACU, I immediately think the patient must be coding, we never get calls from the OR to come in and help. Annie and I take off running to the OR, rushing into the room I quickly scan the room and see no patient! I see blood all over the floor, from the surgery and no patient. I asked frantically what they need, approaching the center of the room and look around the Hana table finding the patient on the floor. Annie screams “Oh my God!”.
I see in the corner of the room my scrub tech friend Ashley holding her knee, the circulator in the room running around panicking as to how we will get this person off the ground. Annie is stuck just repeating “Oh my God” repeatedly. Anesthesia is up top holding the ET tube in place. Dr G says, lets check his body and look for any obvious injuries, I get down on the floor and begin to turn him, in that very moment out comes the ET tube. Dr. G sighs and just says “ well shit”. I ask him what he wants me to do, help re-intubate or what? He instructs the circulator to call Endo for the long back boards, to get this man off the floor.
Still scanning the room, Annie is frozen, Ashley is crying holding her knee which apparently the patient came down on her as he fell off the bed. The orthopedic surgeon in that moment races into the room with an ER stretcher he swiped from an ambulance, which I thought was a good idea. This patient had to be a solid 300 pounds, so there would be no way to lift him back up onto the bed. We all join forces and get the backboard under him, and get him moved on to the ambulance stretcher, and then transferred over to a hospital bed. As the patient begins to wakeup.
Rolling into PACU I can still feel my adrenaline racing, from this chaotic experience. Putting the patient onto the monitor the phone begins ringing, and I pick it up. It’s the house supervisor asking why we didn’t report to her that there was a fall in the OR. I stated, “we just got the patient off the ground, we haven’t had time to report anything.” When she states the patients, daughter called her wanting to talk to the president of the hospital to find out why her dad fell off the table during the operation. I was shocked,the news traveled so fast. The daughter immediately demanded to come back to PACU, we let her in.
She approaches her dad as he is waking up from what should have been a hip nailing on one side. She asks if he is okay, if he is hurting anywhere? He slowly begins to say, “my back hurts”, and in that moment if looks could kill, that daughter shot us a look with daggers in her eyes, YOUR BACK! She demanded a full body X-ray, which was already ordered, and we began the awkward process of taking him for his scans with the angry daughter by his side.
According to what the orthopedic Dr told me, there may have been a hairline crack on the other hip, usually he wouldn’t do anything about, but since he was in a fall he would replace his hip for free. I was kind of shocked the daughter would even trust us to handle him for another surgery. Days later he did in fact have his other hip repaired. This is what began the policy change for how the Hana table would be used in the OR. Typical reactive medicine behavior. I have never forgotten this call weekend, that patient, or when my co-worker was so traumatized all she could do was repeat “Oh my God” repeatedly while we frantically tried to get a person off the ground.