Who Doesn’t Love a Clean Shave?

This is Mr. Clippy. He’s our new mascot. He’s a sticker. And if you come see us for surgery on any part of your body that has hair on it, he will be at the end of your stretcher right next to your name, which sits over your surgeon’s name (the two separated by a line).

Mr. Clippy achieved stardom in efforts to improve the already pretty good score we have for keeping post-surgical site infections to a minimum. We are reducing the “hair clipping” done in the OR. We already do most of it in pre-op. Now we do more.

This is important.  I am in no way attempting to de- emphasize the goal here. Hospitals, ironically, are the places most filled with bacteria, some harmless, some deadly if they reach the bloodstream.

I don’t have a problem with visual cues. As a matter of fact, I love them!

Here’s what makes my eye twitch.

He’s a cartoon character. The raised eyebrows, the large head, and the scissors he’s flailing in the air (We don’t use scissors, by the way) — he looks demonic. As if having some nurse using electric clippers only inches above your manhood where that hernia is bulging out doesn’t provoke enough anxiety. For the women, it’s the defeminizing buzz of the clippers that can be heard twelve feet away, seriously, everyone knows the patient in Bay 6 is getting something shaved.

But, no one should worry.

They’re safety clippers. And when we’re done, we use 2 inch wide pieces of wide medical tape to effectively remove the fallen hair.  And you thought you wouldn’t get spa treatment!Glamour at it’s fines.

Now that I think about it, there’s nothing aesthetic about using tape to remove hair from a surgical site in pre-op, so I’m going to cut  him some slack ( pun intended) and be nice to Mr. Clippy for one month.

Then I’m going to start doodling on the stickers.

 

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