For the more than 10 years that Mary Louise O`Grady has worked as a surgical nurse, she and her colleagues have heard the same line time and again from surgeons.
”Move that damn suction, nurse.”
”Get your hand out of the way.”
”This one isn`t correct.”
Whether out of frustration or the slim hope of having a stress-free shift, O`Grady decided she should follow somewhat in the foosteps of her grandfather. Back in the early 1900s, he gained attention when he invented a chemical to keep fresh fruit from turning brown.
O`Grady determined that she should go to the drawing board to make life a little easier–at least in the operating room. Her work resulted in the design of three cardiac surgical instruments.
”I didn`t find out that my grandfather started as an inventor until I told my family I was trying to design new instruments.
”I just got sick and tired of hearing the same old thing,” said O`Grady, head nurse of cardiac surgery at Michael Reese Hospital and Medical Center. ”The surgeons wanted exactly correct instruments and vendors couldn`t supply them.”
O`Grady, whose instrument designs took shape in 1984, said her frustrations led her to talk with Dr. Robert Replogle, director of cardiac surgery at Reese, about her idea for new forceps and suctions.
Replogle was receptive and O`Grady scrubbed and prepped her alter ego as an inventor. She is believed to be among the first nurses in medical history to take a direct hand in the design of medical instrumentation.
Crediting Replogle with giving her the moral support she needed, O`Grady said she and Replogle drew improved models and discussed the shortcomings of existing instruments.
As each day passed, O`Grady retooled her designs and planned a trip to Europe to see masters of surgical instrumentation at work in Tulingen, Germany. Tulingen is a home base for many medical instruments firms and is considered something of a mecca in the medical instruments industry.
After her trip to Germany, O`Grady took her show on the road in the U.S. and researched companies to have prototypes of her designs made.
Though she admits to striking out the first time around in her dealings with one company, she said the experience helped her understand the workings of business.
”My business has been medicine . . . caring for patients,” said O`Grady. ”I didn`t have the business skills needed to make deals.
”I didn`t have a lawyer. I took people at their word. After some disappointments with the first company, I got a crash course in business, the kind that makes you well-read and well-prepared for the next company you deal with.”
Though the first company–which O`Grady prefers not identifying–was receptive to her designs, willing to make the prototypes and to pay her, executives wouldn`t budge from their decision not to put her name on the instruments or list her name in its sales catalogues.
”It`s probably hard for some people to understand, but I wanted to see my name and have that feeling of satisfaction. I wanted to be right up there with the rest of them. I didn`t want to be bought out,” she said.
O`Grady found a company that filled the bill for her on two counts, willing to reward her financially and to put her name in lights–at least to the extent of having it engraved onto the shiny stainless steel instruments. She also got a listing in the company`s sales catalogue.
The instruments are known as the O`Grady/De Bakey Forceps, O`Grady Coronary Artery Suction and O`Grady Coronary/Vascular Dilators.
The company that handles the sales and marketing of the O`Grady designs is Walter Lorenz Surgical Instruments Co., Jacksonville, Fla. The firm manufactures, markets and sells medical and surgical instruments.
With a new company behind her and new prototypes made, clinical trials of the instruments were conducted in several hospitals around the country.
”Suggestions came in from everyone to shorten or lengthen the instrument or to change the tip,” she said. ”The required changes were made according to the tabulated responses from the clinical investigations.”
But the clinical trials unveiled another use for the instruments.
”We found that they were not only good for cardiac surgery but also for certain types of hand, oral and vascular surgeries,” O`Grady said.
Explaining the use of the surgical instruments she designed in lay terms, O`Grady said the dilators open veins and arteries, typically vessels, involved in coronary bypass operations.
The suction is a narrow, long hollow instrument with equally distributed fine holes on the tip end through which blood is suctioned up during very delicate surgery on a coronary or pulmonary artery or vein.
The forceps, made in one pediatric and two adult sizes, is used to grab tissue.
O`Grady improved upon Houston heart surgeon Dr. Michael De Bakey`s forceps in use by making the instrument easier to handle.
”Before the shaft was smooth and when you handed the forceps to the surgeon he would bounce the instrument on the operating table and pick it up wherever his fingers felt comfortable,” she said, gently motioning as if handing forceps to the surgeon.
Running her fingers along a narrow row of the fine teeth in the forceps she designed, O`Grady said: ”My forceps really are as precise as the human anatomy. There are indentations and holes on the shaft of the forceps to give surgeons the perfect fit during surgical procedures.”
In reference to the dual billing on her forceps, O`Grady said: ”Dr. De Bakey holds the patent on the forceps design I improved upon and the credit had to be shared.”
But she doesn`t mind sharing the credit with De Bakey, because surgeons refer to her instruments in operating rooms as the ”Mary Lou`s.”
O`Grady, who became Reese`s head cardiac nurse two years ago, said she sees her surgical inventions as a new beginning.
”I`ve been in cardiac nursing for more than 10 years,” said O`Grady, who graduated from Cook County Hospital`s School of Nursing and went immediately into surgical nursing.
”I`m like other nurses who come to a period in their career and realize they are burned out, not because of the day-to-day nursing functions but because of the long hours, the low pay and low recognition.”
But as for any plans to hang up her nursing cap, she said: ”I probably will, eventually. Fortunately, I`ve had the support of my employer (Michael Reese) in my efforts to expand my career.”
Mike Teague, vice president of Walter Lorenz, said 35 to 50 hospitals across the country use the O`Grady instruments.
Timing has had everything to do with inventions to which nurses have been linked in the course of medical history, said Olga Church, a nurse historian at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
”Throughout history there have been all kinds of inventions. Not all of them have been earth shattering, but they have made the difference in the delivery of care and the overall care of the patient,” Church said.
The ANA said the nursing community has had a number of inventors. The ANA lists nurse June Abbey, who developed a monitoring device that uses electronic signals to measure urinary bladder fullness in 1981, and Mary Smith, who developed an electronic signaling system in 1982 to alert safety personnel whenever emergency showers are used in industrial settings.
