by Paul Whang, MD

c.2010, ECW Press   $16.95 / $18.95 Canada   199 pages

 

It will be, they say, a minor procedure.

Be at the hospital by early o’dark in the morning. No food after midnight, clear liquids only. You’ll be home in time to watch the news and you’ll get a bonus week off work, just to recuperate. No problem, right?

 

So why are you nervous? Maybe because you hate pain, and there’ll be some. Perhaps you don’t like falling asleep in a room full of strangers. Is it the fear of the unknown? Maybe you just need to read “Operating Room Confidential” by Paul Whang, MD.  That might make you feel more at ease.

 

Or not.

 

Let’s start at the beginning: you need surgery. It’s scheduled, you’ve done the tests, prep and paperwork, and you’re at the hospital on time. You get an IV and you’re as ready for surgery as you’ll ever be. You’re savvy enough to know that real life is nothing like TV, so what really happens next?

 

The nurses and doctors have already made sure everything is ready for you; they’ve thoroughly washed up and everything’s sterile. You might hear music playing as the anesthetist gives you drugs to make your brain sleep (or to make you unaware, depending on the anesthetic). It might be cold in the operating room, and Whang says there’s a reason for that, too.

 

Rest assured, says Whang, that your surgeon and nurses want the atmosphere in the OR to be relaxed. They work as a team, and it’s not unusual for a doctor to ask for help if he or she needs it. When your surgery is finished, an extremely careful count of instruments and equipment is made to ensure that everything’s accounted for, and they’ll give you pain meds before you wake up because waking up is the next thing you’ll know.

 

But that’s not all that goes on in an OR, says Whang. Empty ORs are perfect places for randy interns to tryst. Politics can invade an OR, as can the occasional incompetent surgeon. There’s medical construction going on in some ORs, and that can mean a workout for the doctor. And then there are the disasters…

 

“Operating Room Confidential” is a quirky little book with good parts and bad.

 

Author Paul Whang, MD is a Staff Anesthetist at a Toronto hospital, so you know his explanations and details are authentic. Whang is thorough – even to the point of giving his readers a brief tour of the rest of the hospital – and his side stories are scandalously entertaining.

 

On the other hand, this book is somewhat scattershot, with an awful lot of digressions, distractions, and overgeneralizations (particularly in Whang’s section on surgeons and personality type). Be aware, too, that he’s bluntly honest, which could be scary to anyone having the kinds of surgeries about which he writes.

 

Still, “Operating Room Confidential” was good enough and – as long as you’re not imminently scheduled for surgery – I think you’ll enjoy it. If you’re curious about operations in and out of the OR, this book is a cut above.