Happy Thanksgiving

At this time of year we all need to take personal inventory and be thankfull for all the things we have in our lives...Our health, loved ones, and friends. Make every experience, every day, a learning experience to improve ourselves.
Happy Thanksgiving!

A Time to Clown.....not what I planned

My usual schedule is to treat my scheduled patients in the operating room in the morning and when we are done with all of the cases,  and everyone is cleared in recovery, I go to the pediatric floor to do clown rounds. I leave my bag of stuff and costume bag in the surgeon's lounge and go to work. Friday's cases was a bit different. We had a case of a Down's Syndrome adult who was going to have all of her dental care while she was under general anesthesia because she couldn't handle the care in a routine setting. But the OR was delayed. Let me set the scene....no anesthesiologist yet (they were with another patient in the next room)...only the dental residents preparing the instruments and equiptment, the circulating nurse, scrub nurse (unscrubbed) and the patient and her mother. The patient was very anxious to say the least. She started to act out and wouldn't let anyone come near her. The scrub nurse started to make instant stickers with smiley faces using adhesive tape...this helped, but only for a short time. I took out my cell phone and pulled up my kid's music selections. Seasame Street Platinum is my favorite so I played the Seasame Street Theme Song....this changed the room! Now the nurses and I were dancing with the patient, she was singing, and clapping...other staff came by the room to see what the noise was and the smiles and laughs were contagious.
By the time the anesthesiologist came in,  the place was really hopping. The patient was danced over to the table and she willingly layed down so we could start her IV and start the case.
The entire case ran perfectly and the attitude of the room the rest of the morning was very upbeat. This gave me a real sense of the mission of hospital clowning to "change to mood in the room"
After all the cases I went and got to do the normal clown rounds but the experience of the morning helped make it even more fun and I felt I was more playful with my audiences....
Keep 'em clean!