While I was in nursing school, I was fortunate enough to make a 1 day rotation through the operating room. I was intimidated because the only times I had ever been present in an operating room before were as a patient. The first time was when I broke my ankle and had to have a screw put in it, and the other time was when I had a c-section with my first child (she came out fine).
The surgical staff had me put on a surgical mask and hat and put me at the head of the bed to observe the procedure. The first procedure I witnessed was a breast reduction. As you can imagine, there was a lot of flesh that had to be removed. The way the surgeon did it was to cauterize the skin and then cut out large portions of breast material. As soon as they started cutting through the flesh with the hot "knife", I could smell the flesh burning. The scrub tech that was assisting the surgeon must have seen the green look on my face and advised me to breath through my mouth, rather than my nose, in order to avoid the atrocious smells. I'm thankful to her to this day, because not only was I able to endure my day of observation, but I have now worked for over 2 years in an operating room smelling all kinds of nasty smells every day.
With no further adieu, here are my Top 5 Worst Smells in an Operating Room in no particular order:
1. Burning flesh
2. Bowel movements. Yes, these do rarely happen in the OR
3. Dead body parts...i.e. if a foot has lost circulation and is dead, it is usually amputated, or if it is infected with something like gangrene
4. Dead bowel....if a patient's intestines have partly died inside, when the belly is opened for the removal of the dead bowel, it has a terrible smell
5. Obese people....I'm not trying to be rude, just realistic. When people are very overweight, sometimes they are not able to clean their body as they should, and junk gets trapped in their folds creating a foul odor
O.K. enough grossness for the day!
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