Updating Families from the Operating Room

Someone you care about is undergoing a surgical procedure, and you’re concerned, or downright worried, about how they’re doing. The hours go by and you are left waiting and wondering, hoping someone will fill you in soon.

To help reassure family and friends and keep them in the loop as much as possible during surgery, we’ve started offering our reconstructive and plastic surgery patients the use of a free digital service called MDConnectME. Here’s how it works: In advance of the surgery date, our patient opts in to receive a digital invitation from MDConnectME, asking for a list of cell phone numbers for designated family and friends. This list can include people who will be in the waiting room during surgery, and also those who are nearby, across the country or even around the world.

Right before, during and after the procedure, our surgical staff uses a cell phone or iPad to text real-time updates to the patient’s family and friends. We are not typing new texts, but choosing from an easily accessed, existing list of message options that provide status alerts. So for example, family and friends might receive periodic texts that say: “[Rachel] is being evaluated by anesthesia” or “[Rachel] is going into surgery” or “[Rachel] is in recovery,” and so on.

For a surgery of more than one hour in particular, this method of simple communication can be extremely reassuring. It can allow a husband, wife or parent to leave the waiting room for a meal or a walk without missing an important surgical update. Or, family or loved ones anywhere can be quickly notified to meet up with the surgeon.

The feedback we’ve received has been very positive, with patients happy that their families know where they are in the surgical process. Family members have said they feel more at ease and reassured when they received the updates, and the broader distribution list relieved some of the burden on them to provide multiple updates to concerned family and friends.

What do you think about updates for surgical patients' families? Have there been times you wish you could have been updated?

Dr. C. Andrew Salzberg, a board certified plastic and reconstructive surgeon, is Associate Professor at NY Medical College and Chief of Plastic Surgery at Westchester Medical Center and St. John's Riverside Hospital at Dobbs Ferry Pavilion. He also operates at the Institute for Aesthetic and Reconstructive Surgery within the Hudson Valley Hospital Center and at The Mt. Sinai Hospital Center in New York City. He is a partner with the New York Group for Plastic Surgery. http://www.nygplasticsurgery.com