Is That the Biceps or the Achilles?: Why Nobody in the OR Asks the Question They Need To

THE WOODLANDS TX -- Ten years ago Jason ordered a light blue, purple, and pink velvet jacket off Amazon for $25, wore it to a Kentucky Derby-themed gala with horse-print pants his wife found, and won best dressed. He now owns several. This is the velvet jacket rule. This episode is about authenticity in a profession built on conformity, and why the leader who refuses to take himself seriously gives everyone around him permission to relax. Jason explains why the jacket isn't a performance, why "will the good of the other as other" means you don't love people by asking them to be something they're not, and why for some people the Armani suit is the authentic choice. They get into vulnerability in the OR: the scrub tech looking at a shoulder who can't tell the biceps from the Achilles and doesn't feel safe enough in the room to ask, and what that costs the patient and the team. Taylor tells the story of a traveling tech who faked confidence through a case she'd never done. Then the harder side: what not fitting the mold has cost, the person who asked Jason "what if you weren't very good at surgery?" as a way of saying stay in your lane, the doc-fluencer debate, and how to keep the comment section from living rent free in your head. It closes on a nurse's tattoo that reads "not everyone's cup of tea."

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