A hospital recruiter sent me a sales pitch to get me to apply to a surgical tech position - this image was attached, and the more I look at it, the worse it gets. Breakdown in comments.
Idk if this is the work of AI, or just a 3D artist who didn’t get very good instructions for their commission.
At first glance: nothing special, just a collection of random instruments; but when you start to dissect it under the lens of a surgical tech (the target audience for this image) it just gets worse and worse.
So let’s dissect it!
First off, that isn’t even a surgical backtable - it appears to be on some kind of supply cart, with a raised lip around the edges, and random rectangular holes for handles that have folded sheet metal along the edge. Technically you could throw an impervious drape of that and it’d be fine, but you generally don’t see surfaces made to support a sterile field with raised edges that go above the field. The folded sheet metal is also a no-no, as the grooves around it collect and breed the hell out of bacteria.
None of it’s draped. There’s that greenish material under the tray and instruments, but stops short of the edges of the cart, so there’s some REALLY high contamination potential going on there. You could get away with a field like that in dental (which is just ‘clean’ vs sterile), but again, this wasn’t sent for a dental tech position.
Instruments from left to right, we’re looking at:
- a scalpel that’s for some reason separate from all the other sharps in the kidney basin.
- looks like a tissue forcep - that actually checks out.
- …the only times I’ve seen a forcep like have been in ortho sets that have a lot of plates and screws - those forceps are to grab the tiny screws from their caddy, cuz they’re hard to get your fingers around, and normal forceps tend to ‘slip’ around the head of the screw and send it flying across the OR.
- that’s a sponge forcep, but the end is bent in a really odd way; and it doesn’t have a ratchet lock, which isn’t unheard of, but definitely not common for a sponge forcep.
- Dental explorer, which checks out with the whole not-really-sterile thing; except if it was a dental setup there’d be a lot more dental instruments.
- Fuck if I know. Doesn’t help that the resolution isn’t great, but the operative ends kind of look flat. Bowel clamps are shaped like that, but that is DEFINITELY not an open-belly setup lol. Also - the ringed end where your fingers would go is closed all the way, but the operational end is still open. If a real instrument looks like that, then it’s damaged as fuck and needs to be thrown away.
- Either a kocher clamp or straight hemostat - hard to tell w/ shitty res. But they have have the same weirdness with the ratchet being closed w/ operation end still open.
- That looks like a potts scissor, which is usually for vascular surgery. Handle is janky as fuck though, and it’s doing the opposite weirdness as mentioned before: it’s operative end is closed all the way, but the handles are still a tad open.
- Mayo scissors, which are a go-to for cutting suture. Only weirdness here is the janky handle style.
…and that kidney basin in the upper right of the tray is just chock-full of WTF. So they’re using it as a sharps container - that’s normal, but they’ve got the scalpels facing one direction and needles facing the other… that’s a good way to get stabbed. ALL of the sharps are resting on the edge, meaning if you bump them just right, they’ll do a flip and launch off… that’s a good way to get stabbed. They’ve got all their sharps in one spot, except for that one random scalpel on the left of the tray. Establishing a sharps zone and then not putting sharps in it… that’s a good way to get stabbed. The scalpels and needles in the kidney basin all have the sharp end stuck into some gauze or something… that’ll dull or bend the super fine end, reducing its effectiveness and generating snag points that’ll cause a bit of unnecessary trauma. Between the three scalpels in the basin and the bonus one floating off to the left, a solid third of the instruments displayed are scalpels lol… are they doing a Wolverine cosplay in the OR?? The blades detach… you only need one scalpel handle - maybe two if you want one ready and on stand by. Also all of them are loaded with what looks like a #24 scalpel blade, which isn’t very common; and is a fucking massive blade… I could see wanting ONE of those for something like an emergency C-section when you need to rip that skin open fucking NOW, but 4 of those monsters set up with an otherwise tiny collection of instruments? lol no. Those two syringes aren’t capped, which is a good way to get stabbed; or labeled, which is a good way mix up your local anesthetic with something that could cause excruciating pain.
…there’s just so much wrong with this image it’s comical. I can’t believe a fucking hospital would choose this over the millions of OR photos already floating around the web lol.
That was a fun rant to type up. If you actually read that wall of text, hope you got a kick out of it lol!
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