Vision correction

[Guest Lactic Folly]

Those of you who need them, do you prefer to wear contacts or glasses while working in the hospital? Does it make a difference? (on-call, use of equipment, protective wear)

[Guest Ian Wong]

Glasses for me. I think having contacts in for a full 30 hour on-call shift would be pretty rough. They even have the side benefit of providing you with some splash protection from the front (although not from the sides). Glasses can get a little awkward if they slide down while you are doing something under sterile conditions (ie. a bedside procedure or are in the OR), but generally this hasn't been a problem.

 

Many surgeons who have glasses will either tape them to their face or forehead prior to scrubbing in, or have some kind of an elastic band at the back of your glasses to prevent them from slipping. A neat trick that an OR nurse taught me was to use the top "strings" of your OR face mask to hold your glasses up. It's pretty easy to do once you get the hang of it.

 

First, fit the mask to your nose and face.

 

Then, tie the bottom set of strings at the back of your neck.

 

Then, take the top set of strings, and loop each string once around your glasses (somewhere near the earpiece or at the end of the straight portion of the glasses near your ears).

 

When you tie the top set of strings now, they'll tighten around your glasses, and keep them supported.

 

Ian

[Guest Lactic Folly]

Cool, thanks for the tip

[Guest Ian Wong]

Floating back to the top...

 

Ian