Every surgeon is committed to the case at hand, but how far would most of them go to overcome the obstacles that might delay them from their duties? When a massive traffic jam stood between Catherine Baucom, MD, and the surgery center where she was scheduled to operate, she borrowed a child's bike and started pedaling.

Dr. Baucom, a surgical breast oncologist and amateur cyclist, tried unsuccessfully to bypass gridlocked traffic in Baton Rouge, La., before finding herself near the house of her colleague and friend, hematologist Brian Barnett, MD.

"Hey, you got a bike?" she asked him. Dr. Barnett had one — his 7-year-old daughter's hot pink Schwinn. What about a helmet? Dr. Barnett's daughter had one of those, too: pink and princess-themed. Dr. Baucom strapped it on, dropped her cell phone into the bike's basket and started weaving through the gridlock.

"No one was moving, except for me," says Dr. Baucom, who received encouragement and a few honks from double-taking motorists as they watched a scrub-wearing surgeon cruise by, knees knocking the handlebars of her tiny ride.

Dr. Baucom even encountered a police roadblock along the way, where an officer offered to escort her the rest of the way. "I did tell him I didn't know if he could keep up with me," she quipped.

Thirty minutes after her pink journey began, Dr. Baucom coasted into the parking lot of the Brass Surgery Center, where staff cheered her arrival.

"A lot of our patients are women and they come in from out of town," says Dr. Baucom. "They're very nervous, for different reasons. So I felt like I needed to get there for them."

Daniel Cook

The risk of obesity among nurses increases with the lack of routine exercise or sleep often brought on by long, irregular or stressful work schedules, say occupational health researchers.

For a study published in the August issue of the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, the researchers examined wellness data among 1,724 nurses, including weight, work schedule and other health-related factors.

For nurses with "adverse work schedules" — that is, those assigned to long shifts, overtime hours or on-call situations — obesity was often linked to insufficient healthy behaviors, such as exercise or restful sleep habits. This stood in contrast to those with more favorable work schedules, who saw their risk of obesity rise due to partaking in such unhealthy behaviors such as drinking alcohol or smoking tobacco.

"Adverse work schedules may be an overriding work-related factor for nurse obesity," alongside the stress of the job itself or demands of home and family life, conclude co-author Alison M. Trinkoff, ScD, RN, of the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore and her colleagues.

David Bernard

This Friday, August 31, is the deadline for participating in Outpatient Surgery Magazine's OR Excellence 2012 pre-registration contest. There's no time like the present to secure your spot at our uniquely interactive education event, to lock in savings or to enter for a chance at more than $11,000 in prizes.

Early registrants will receive a $100 discount off the conference's full registration fee, guarantee their reservation at the meeting and secure discounted rooms at the spectacular Harbor Beach Marriott Resort & Spa in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., the center of conference activity.

In addition, all attendees who are paid in full by August 31 will be entered into a drawing for prizes that include Oceanview Terrace dinners, 2 additional free nights at the resort, and the grand prize: an upgrade to the Marriott's vice-presidential suite plus an extra 2 nights' stay — a $10,000 value.

Sound appealing? Visit the OR Excellence website for more information and to register.

Stephen Archibald

Are you ready to report quality measures to Medicare? Tell us in this week's InstaPoll if you think this is a good idea.

Beginning in October, ambulatory surgery centers must start reporting data on 5 quality measures on their Medicare claims or face future Medicare payment reductions. Tell us in this week's InstaPoll if you think this is a good idea.

Will video laryngoscopy become a standard of care?More than 4 out of 5 (82%) of the respndents to last week's InstaPoll believe that video laryngoscopy will become a standard of care. "If you can do something under direct visualization, you'll have more success than doing it blindly," says anesthesiologist Daniel O'Neill, MD, of the New York University Langone Medical Center in New York, N.Y.

Dan O'Connor