Left Hand vs. Right Hand Demonstration

00:05 For all those who are left handed who anticipate working in a procedural environment, don't feel like you can't work in a left handed world with left handed instruments.

00:13 The problem is, if you want to be a left handed person with right hand instruments, you're going to find a very big uphill battle.

00:20 And I can say that as a lefty myself, when I was hired to the CV surgical role that I initially started in directly out of Nurse Practitioner school.

00:27 I was told kind of tongue in cheek by the surgeon that it was hiring me that I couldn't work with him in the OR if I was a lefty.

00:34 Because we would bump arms all the time.

00:36 So realizing that right hand instruments, the box lock breaks free, much easier for this than lefties, you know, it's not that big of a deal.

00:45 But you're going to have to kind of pull down on your thumb to break this free.

00:49 And it's a little bit more work than not.

00:52 And you'll get kind of sore on your thumb.

00:54 My encouragement to you is that everybody, lefty or righty, tried to do this with your right hand.

00:59 I think you'll find the instrument is designed everywhere you go, you're going to find right hand instruments.

01:04 And because of that, you're going to find that these are much easier to learn and use as a right handed instrument as opposed to a left handed instrument.

01:11 I don't say that to say that you can't be more dexterous with your left hand than right.

01:16 But I will say that as a left handed person who trained to learn how to be right handed in the OR, not a big deal, you will be able to work through it.

01:24 I think you're going to find that it's not that difficult.

01:26 In fact, you'll appreciate it more.

01:29 Because when you think about this, this becomes a smart hand that's guiding a tissue and telling you where to go.

01:36 And this is kind of the dumb hand that just driving a needle.

01:38 It's not that big of a deal.

01:39 Okay, so this is the hand that gets to do more of the work.

01:42 And as a lefty, you're going to benefit from this.

01:44 Once you practice just this motion, back and forth.

01:46 You go, "Okay, I can do my left or right." And now not fighting the instrumentation.

01:50 So be willing to consider that you may benefit from being a left handed person, but using a right handed technique with this particular thing as I do and I find it works very well in my practice.

02:00 Just food for thought.