The Perioperative Nurse’s Top Ten Signs That They Need A Vacation

10. You answer your home phone by saying, “Surgery, Mary, May I help you?”

9. In the perioperative nurse’s kitchen, their recipes have the ingredients listed in CC’s, grams and ounces.

8. You enter your PYXIS password on the microwave and can not figure out why the dumb thing doesn’t work!

7. You peel open food packages using sterile technique as you deliver them to your kitchen table for preparation.

6. At the check out, you are assessing the veins on the cashier, thinking, “A #16ga. insyte or butterfly?”

5. You rotate your kitchen towels and bath towels like you rotate the sterile packs at work.

4. You jump up to check your ‘ON CALL’ beeper and realize it is the pager on the TV show you’re watching that is going off.

3. Wrapping Christmas presents envelope style seems quite normal.

2. Before preparing the evening meal for your family, you wash your hands as if you are going to be scrubbing an aorta bi-fem.

1. When opening a jar at a friend’s house you repeat, “Righty tighty, lefty loosey”, and your friend looks at you like you’re from another planet.

Contributed by Dina Pratt, RN, CNOR