If you parachuted into the Amazon jungle tomorrow, you might expect all of your senses to be stimulated by the new environment. Your nostrils would filter the pungent smell of leaves rotting on the jungle floor. Your eyes would take in colorful parrots darting between the trees. You might even “taste” the warm humidity of the air as you breathed it in.

The operating room is a lot like the jungle in that it stimulates all of your senses. From the moment you walk through the door of the OR, your five senses will kick into overdrive. Here’s what to expect.

When you first enter the OR before the start of a case, you will see a whirlwind of activity (Figure 9.1). While there won’t be any parrots in sight, you will see many people swooping from pre-op holding to supply room to operating suite, often carrying armloads of supplies and paperwork. You will score points with the circulating nurse if you offer to help carry some of this equipment, but be careful where you set it once inside the room. Don’t touch or approach anything blue in color (Figure 9.2), because blue represents the sterile field.

The OR may be second only to the Amazon for richness of color. You won’t be bedazzled by the gorgeous blooms of tropical flowers like you might in the jungle, but you will take in a variety of hues, including the blue of the gowns worn by surgeons, residents, and scrub techs, the gleaming silver of stainless steel instruments, the red of blood spilling from the surgeon’s incisions, and the pink, yellow, and white of tissues inside the body (Figure 9.3). In terms of the visual experience of the OR, seeing the inside of a person’s body is perhaps the most fascinating aspect of this setting. Visualizing a beating heart marks a profound moment inside any OR, no matter how many times you’ve seen it. Your sight contributes a great deal to the richness of the OR experience (Figure 9.4).