At any job site there is always existing and potential hazards which all

persons have to be aware about. At Grand Strand Medical Center the faculty and
staff work hard to bring awareness of these hazardous and to prevent them from
happening. Some hazardous include a medical emergency, infant abduction, fire,
bomb threat, disaster, pediatric abduction, an active shooter, and a clear and
present threat. For any of these emergencies a staff member should call the
extension 1111. This will alert the hospital and get help as quickly as possible. If
there is a fire in the building one should use the acronyms RACE and PASS. The
hospital tells you to R- remove patient, A- alarm or sound, C- contain the fire, and E-
extinguish the fire. In order to put out the fire a person should P- pull the pin, A-
aim the hose at the base of the fire, S- squeeze the handle, and S- sweep the hose.
Other ways that the hospital takes precautions is by having PPE or personal
protective equipment. This equipment protects yourself and others such as faculty
and patients. Protective equipment includes gloves, gowns, a mask, hairnets, and
shoe guards. In the surgical services hallways there are red lines. These lines mark
where the faculty must be fully dressed in scrubs, a hair net, and mask. If a person is
caught not wearing the proper material they could be in much trouble and in risk of
infection. The purpose of the red lines is to protect patients and faculty from getting
any infection, disease, or virus. In the operating room each doctor, surgeon, and
nurse must make use of the hand washing technique. They wash away germs and
bacteria from their hands by washing their hands very diligently for at least two
minutes. Surgeons also have to wash their hands with iodine to make sure to get rid
of all bacteria so that the safety of the patient is insured. This helps prevent patients
from getting a nosocomial infection which is an infection caused by the hospital.
When the surgeon enters the operating room they must wear a protective gown,
which insures that no blood or body fluids gets on them, which could cause them
any harm. They also must wear sterile gloves. In many occasions they actually wear
more than one pair of gloves. When operating on the patient the hospital provides
several sterile materials in which to operate on the patient. This insures that the
patient gets no bacterial infections that could be caused by dirty or contaminated
operating equipment. If anyone other than the surgeon and the surgical technician
touches the items on the sterile table then the items are considered to be
contaminated and the hospital has to provide new sterile equipment to continue
operating. Any materials that become contaminated are thrown away to make sure
that the safety of all persons is kept up to date. All sterile materials are put in cloths,
which are blue. The staff also has to keep an accurate count of all the materials to
make sure nothing is missing. This insures that no one took one of the materials and
could cause harm to themselves or others or steps on the item and gets severally
injured. At the hospital they also have a led jacket these jackets protect the faculty
from the harms of radioactivity which is present in the operating room when taking
x-rays. Grand Strand Medical Center takes several precautions to make sure the
faculty and patients are safe. Each staff member is given an id. Without the id no
one is able to get within the operating room. These ids act as keys to allow only the
faculty into the halls of the hospital. This protects the faculty and patients to make
sure that no intruder can just simply walk through out the hospital freely.
This week I got to experience life in a whole new perspective. I was put into
the shoes of nurses, surgeons, and just simply an observer. I was able to see what
not the average person sees. I watched and observed operations in which surgeons
perfected and operated in diligence. On Tuesday I watched as a surgeon replaced an
older womans screws in her coxal region. He made three incisions in which one
was to keep the metal rod she had installed in her femur from moving around freely
and to make it easier to remove the old screws to put new ones in. The whole
reason for this operation was because the woman had fallen. The good news out of
this operation was that it was very successful without any complications. The
surgeons had tried to make the patient healthier and happier by giving her the
safest care that a hospital can provide. Also, on the same day I watched as an old
man received an operation in order to place a wire around his hipbone to insure
that it grows back properly. He also fell in which he then needed an operation to fix
the problem. This was a simple procedure and was very similar in many ways as the
other operation I had watched on the same day. Except, in this operation the man
was not asleep as the older woman but was awake. He received a spinal tap in
which the bottom half of his body was completely numbed in which he could not feel
the operation taking place. On Wednesday I was able to see a very exciting
operation in which a man needed to get his spleen removed. This is called a
splenectomy. He needed this operation done because he had a splenomegaly. This is
when the spleen is enlarged. When the surgeon removed the spleen it was so large
that it was the size of the liver. The sight of the enlarged spleen astonished the
entire surgical services team. The surgeon said it was the largest spleen he had ever
seen. After removing the spleen the surgeon asked me to look at his appendix. I did
so. When I looked at his appendix it was also enlarged. He informed me that after
this operation the patient would need to come back to get his appendix removed in
order to insure that it would not rupture. If the appendix ruptures it releases an
infecting fluid, which is then called sepsis. It would poison the patients body and
most of the time leads to death. The fact that the surgeon was able to locate that the
patients appendix was enlarged will greatly help the patients health and safety to
make sure that he can go on living a healthy and happy life.