Sterile_Technique

joined 2 years ago
MODERATOR OF

Fuck yeah! Pumpkin spice is delicious! That shit oughta be year round.

 

Coworker is building one of the fancier surround sound setups, and mentioned we wished he could find the THX Deepnote in full surround sound. Seemed like a simple enough request, so I did some searching myself, and am only seeing YouTube videos like this one, or .mp3 files, both of which (afaik) only support two audio channels.

Even THX's own website just links to more YouTube videos.

I don't actually know jack about surround sound or audio formats - taking his word and the web articles I've stumbled across all at face value... am I just being stupid about this? Is there somewhere to download the full-quality thing?

[–] Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world 14 points 15 hours ago

As with all Nazis, here's hoping he dies before he gets a chance to do any real damage.

You won't be missed, traitor. Except perhaps by the Ukrainian sunflowers once they've exhausted the fertilizer spilling out of your veins.

[–] Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world 7 points 21 hours ago

Thanks!! As you've seen already, I'm happy to ramble: feel free to hit me with any questions. The OR is a pretty alien environment to anyone who doesn't work there.

Just keep in mind that as the surg tech, I'm literally the rock bottom of the OR food chain. And an anonymous internet stranger, so take this all in with the credibility it deserves (none at all!).

[–] Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

You might get chewed out.

[–] Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world 17 points 1 day ago (3 children)

...if I'm not careful I'll get Nintendo's attention, and then I'm fucked!

[–] Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world 34 points 1 day ago (6 children)

Expected outcome. Then I go to HR to complain that the second I show up with a fun scrub cap, they take away fun scrub caps in a decision that's clearly targeting me personally.

[–] Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world 47 points 1 day ago (2 children)

murderer

Not to worry - Luigi took care of him.

Whatever happened to this piece of shit?

He won the election, unfortunately.

[–] Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

>_>

Conciseness is not my strength.

[–] Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world 61 points 1 day ago (9 children)

"What's wrong with Mario?? Dave has a Starwars cap and no one's griped about it!"

[–] Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world 38 points 1 day ago (6 children)

The short version is we're the surgeon's bitch. Before a surgery, we pull all the instrument sets and sterile supplies needed for a case; open those items to create a sterile field, and organize that field so that it can easily facilitate the actual case. Just before the case, we'll help position and sometimes (this is usually nurse territory) prep the surgical site on the patient.

During the case, passing instruments to and from the backtable/mayo stand is our bread and butter... if you've seen TV shows about the OR they always have this scene where the surgeon says "scalpel" and holds his hands out expectantly. The hand the comes out of the corner of the screen with a scalpel is me. ...except if they actually have to vocalize "scalpel" you've already fucked up - more realistically they'd jump on the opportunity to say something snarky like "You awake over there, bro?" ...generally we need to know surgeries well enough to anticipate the expected steps. Do your job well and the surgeon doesn't have to ever actually ask for anything cuz it's already in their hand. We also handle specimens and assist with certain surgical actions like retracting tissue, clipping bleeders, suturing (sometimes... most surgeons like to do the suturing themselves). The whole time we're monitoring for breaks in sterility... like a case I did today, I noticed the surgeon had a tiny hole in his glove, so I called him out - didn't break skin, so the surgeon was fine, but at some point in the case, something got contaminated, but we don't know what, so that patient got extra antibiotics and will be more closely monitored for infection.

After the case, we again help move the patient, then tear it all down, set the instruments up to go down to sterile processing, clean the room up, and open for the next one.

This video (fair warning: gore) does a decent job showcasing it (most surgical tech content on youtube is not great).

Elbow deep in some stranger's abdomen is 'just another Tuesday'.

It's a cool job - I'm especially lucky to have it, cuz when I enlisted I was was just randomly assigned to the military's version of it... could have just as well been put into any other job in the military. I'm a civilian now, and using my GI bill to go to nursing school - crossing over to the dark side soon! Hoping to stay in the OR though, just as a nurse instead of a tech.

Pay is okay... I've been at it for a decade, and am up to $24/hr. Nurses make a lot more than we do, so I generally don't advise people bother with paying for a civilian surgical tech school when they could get an associates in nursing instead - similar prereqs, not that much more of a time commitment to graduation, but way higher earning potential.

Also it hurts. My back, hips, knees, and ankles are pretty well fucked. We almost never sit except on our lunch break, and standing in the same position (or contorted pulling some dude's liver away from the surgeon for hours) causes lots of degradation over time, so it's kind of a shitty job to shoot for as a long term option. Hitting that decade mark is more a result of me procrastinating than anything else - idk why any scrub tech sticks with it long enough to retire from it, but people do.

I’m wrapping up my med lab program myself.

If you end up working in a hospital lab, the OR would probably let you sit in for a few cases if you ask. Especially for shit like thyroid cases where we send a shitload of frozens to lab just so you can see our end of bringing that chaos to you.

I’ve got a background in histo and might end up doing quick TAT H&E slides mid-surgery

You're probably already familiar with Mohs procedures, but if not, you sound like you'd be golden for that. They slice the specimen along the entire diameter and screen the full surface of the wound for cancer - as opposed to just checking margins. ...then again, that might be the kind of thing you're leaving if you've got a history in histo... I have no idea what the breakdown is of who does what in the lab setting.

 

I'll leave the thread up incase anyone wants to continue the conversation tho.

[–] Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world 103 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I can barely afford rent!

Well... the good news is you can stretch your income a bit further with spaghettification!

 

Short version:

☝title, something that can be clipped onto scrubs or worn around the neck. Also easy to clean - hard surfaces that can be wiped down with alcohol, no cloth coverings or anything.

 

Long version:

Nursing student here. Basically I'm trying to build a stethoscope that doesn't need to be inserted into my ears.

I have some hearing loss, and currently use hearing aids, which has posed a frequent annoyance / hazard at my clinical rotations when it comes time to listen to my patient's heart and lung sounds. I can't use a normal stethoscope with the hearing aids in, cuz it shoves them way too deep into my ear canal (doesn't feel great); so I've just been popping the fuckers out and using the stethoscope normally when needed. ...but I hate doing that, cuz hospitals are disgusting - there's literal and metaphorical shit on everything, so screwing with the hearing aids mid shift is 100% introducing pathogens into my ears.

At my last clinical site, one of the nurses had a bluetooth stethoscope that seemed like the miracle solution I needed - it's basically a stethoscope bell with no tubing, and it pairs with bluetooth headphones. She let me try it out, so I paired it with my hearing aids, and... heart beats sounded like two pieces of metal clanking against eachother. Total flop, clinically useless. Fuck.

So I whine to my audiologist, and eventually we figure out that the issue is that heart and lung sounds range from 20-100 hz; and my hearing aids are designed to amplify human speech, which is about 300-3000 hz. The speakers in my hearing aids are not physically capable of playing heart and lung sounds (that clanky metal sound was just the tiny bit that overlapped with the hearing aid's range). More fuck.

So, I don't think my hearing aids are going to be part of the solution here, but I'm still seeing potential in the bluetooth stethoscopes: but instead of pairing it with bluetooth headphones, since again the ear canals are already occupied, instead pair it with a bluetooth speaker that I can clip onto my scrubs or use the kind that hangs around the neck.

Poking around the internet, there are tons of those types of bluetooth speakers, but they never seem to advertise the hertz range and I'm worried about getting a whole setup built, then running into the same issue with the new speaker not playing the sounds I need to do an actual nursing assessment. And those bluetooth stethoscopes are expensive as fuck, so if I'm going to dive in to this, I want to make sure I don't screw it up.

What do you all think? Any brands or specific products you'd lean to?

Also, bonus question: putting yourself in the patient's shoes: how would you feel if your nurse dropped in rocking a setup like this? If it's playing through normal speakers, YOU the patient would be able to hear your own heart and lung sounds during my assessment - my thought was it'd be great for patient education: "That clicking sound when you exhale is called crackles, which means there's fluid in your lungs, so..." Would that make for a decent patient experience, or be offputting or intimidating? I've been a surgical tech for like a decade, so my perspective is pretty skewed in terms of how much info is too much info.'

Thanks all!

 

"Weird" to be interpreted at the reader's discretion.

Looking for some cool new tunes.

I'll get the ball rolling with one of mine: Scaretale by Nightwish. That song is all over the place... it's like haunted fantasy carnival jingle metal. Love it.

 

Please go into lots of detail - some of us are taking notes!

 

Hey all!

This feels like a weird request, so I'm hoping to pick the brains of anyone familiar with Ukrainian culture, as both an authenticity check, and to make sure this project wouldn't come off as disrespectful, so let me know what you think and don't pull any punches.

I'm a surgical tech in the US, and one of the surgeons I work with is involved with a program that helps train Ukrainian doctors in specific types of surgeries that have a heightened demand from all the wartime injuries coming from Putin's dumb fucking war.

During an operation, this doc mentioned wanting to get a scrub cap that featured a fusion of traditional Ukrainian folk embroidery and iconography relevant to his practice (surgical instruments? The hospital logo? I'll have to follow up with him to see specifically what he meant).

Anyway, hearing all that, the whole time I was thinking "I can make that happen..."

So, the first question is SHOULD I make that happen? The fusion bit especially strikes me as culturally risky, especially since this dude is going to be standing across the OR bed from people who live that culture... Would it come off as disrespectful at all?

If it passes the first check, are there elements of the design I should gravitate toward or steer away from? Looking at this article, it sounds like different patterns have different meanings, so I don't want to submit a design filled with iconography relevant to like fishing or something: shooting for medical / healing themes, or anything that promotes concepts like partnership or defense / military victory.

And finally, the cap itself probably wouldn't be allowed if it was authentic embroidery - it'd have to meet all the criteria for surgical scrub attire / laundering, so my thought is to whip up a custom pattern on Photoshop, then submit that to a company that can make custom prints of fabric (not decals, but actual prints) for a sheet of cotton that looks like the embroidery, then take that fabric to someone who makes scrub caps (got a few local options for that last bit).

Then doc can rep for Ukraine in the OR!

Thoughts?

29
...and domestic. (lemmy.world)
submitted 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) by Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world to c/politicalmemes@lemmy.ca
 

AFAIK, there's no fine print that says "...except when that enemy is the president."

Stop harassing protesters and do your job, troops.

 

https://www.army.mil/values/oath.html

 

Heresy, right? I've had a mechanical for the last couple of years, and while it's served me well enough, I still don't like the feel or clickety-clack compared to a membrane switch - and my current one is the Razer Blackwidow Stealth w/ rubber o-rings added to the base of each key, which I think is as non-clackety as a mechanical gets.

Anyway, the Blackwidow is starting to have issues - F5 key died months ago, and lately it's been doing this annoying thing where I press a key and it registers the downstroke, but not the release, of the Tab and D keys until I pull it from its USB port and reinsert. It's time.

...but the initial search for a replacement all I'm seeing are either mechanical or mimicking mechanical (like a membrane switch but with the big blocky keys that mechanicals use).

My favorite keyboard 'feel' 100% is an oldschool laptop style keyboard. Like the IBM T60 - flat, light to the touch, and no dead space in between the keys like you see in a lot of today's laptops (the 'island' style... not a fan).

I don't think my entire wish-list exists in a single product, but what I'm after is:

  • That T60 style described above

  • Programmable keys (remap / macros)

  • Corded... unless cordless options have really improved in the last decade or so: I recall a noticeable delay, and constantly running out of battery.

  • Extra keys specifically for binding macros like the Blackwidow

  • Backlight. Low priority, and I don't give a shit about RGB (or aesthetics in general), but it is nice to be able to be able to see which key is which when the room is dark.

...is anything even kind-of like that on the market, or should I just shut up and get another mechanical?

 

Inspired by this thread.

I could have sworn when I was in highschool (y’know, like 25 thousand years ago) you could order a bag of like 50 3.5mm audio jack plugs but with no wire or connection after the plug. I'm searching for these now, but the closest I'm seeing are legit components designed to be an adaptor or connect to a wire.

It was just a 3.5mm audio plug with matte black plastic cap on the end, so you’d plug it into a TV’s headphone jack and some models of TVs would be permanently silenced until someone unplugged the cap, because it was sending its audio to the ‘speakers’ that were just plugged in. And once plugged in, it just looked like a screw cover cap - nothing protruding. But also didn’t damage anything, so you couldn’t get in any real trouble for doing it.

Shoddy photoshop to illustrate the gist:

…am I just imagining shit? If anyone knows what I’m talking about and figure out the magic search terms to actually pull it up, please drop a link to a product that can be ordered.

Anyway, the TV in my work's breakroom is one of the culprits, so I'd love to hit it with one of these and see how long it takes for them to figure out why it won't vomit out the misinformation they're addicted to.

Audio jack sabotage aside, any suggestions on how to otherwise fuck with it would also be golden.

Thanks all!

 

What's up chefs,

So one of my coworker's kids has been in ROUGH shape the last couple months - couldn't keep anything down. After a ton of labs and testing they FINALLY figured out she has CSID, and they've got her diet narrowed down to foods she can actually stomach.

But, there's sucrose and maltose in like everything, so she's going to be super limited on what she can eat for the rest of her life.

So... I want to send her mom home from work with the best fucking dessert she's ever had, and as many recipes as I can get a hold of, especially comfort food kinds of dishes.

If you've got any that sound like a good match, please share!

Thanks all!

 

US - For the first time in my life I'm not living paycheck to paycheck, but now that I've got a bit of savings it feels like the US dollar and economy is on the cusp of death.

I'm wondering if I should split my bank account into another one that isn't affiliated with the US, maybe even have a percentage of each paycheck go to that one automatically. The thought being to not have all my eggs in one basket.

No idea the best way to go about this, or if it's even remotely a good idea. What do y'all think? Any relatively stable economy to shoot for / ease of opening/accessing an account in a country I'm not physically in?

This is new territory for me - my financial planning historically hasn't gone much past comparing the price tags of 40 lb bags of rice, so... Idk, I have no idea what I'm doing. I have this dread that the income I have now is about to become worthless, and not sure how to protect myself from that.

 

My death cult is better than yours.

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