Real-Life Communication
Although there are areas in sterile processing where the employees
work only with machines and have little professional contact with co-workers,
other areas, such as the operating room, require more communication skills.
In
the operating room, you are responsible for site preparation and for ensuring
all of the proper operating instruments are present.
"[Sterile technicians]
are in the O.R. to facilitate the work in the room," Helen Vandoremalen says.
"They would get equipment for them and make sure they've got everything
they need. They have to be pretty calm and have good communication skills.
They don't want to get into a fight."
You are an operating room
technician. In the course of an operation, you realize that there is a piece
of equipment missing.
You scan similar tools and recognize that there
is a suitable substitute if the surgeon is to ask. The surgeon notices the
piece is absent and immediately becomes enraged. He asks you to leave the
operating room.
With the welfare of the patient on your mind, you leave.
Later,
you realize that you are upset at the doctor for making a fool of you, yelling
at you in front of other hospital staff.
You decide the most appropriate
route to express your anger to the surgeon without damaging your working relationship
is to write him a note.
The next day, you write a 100-word letter that
expresses how you feel to the surgeon, communicating these three points:
- Who you are
- That you are embarrassed that he yelled at you in front of your colleagues
- That you had a comparable instrument available to the one he was asking
for but did not have the opportunity to give it to him before he removed you
from the O.R.
Write your letter now.