National Nurses United

W hen aida benitez was a young girl, she would join her parents when they traveled from their home in Central Mexico to work in the peach fields of Modesto, Calif. While her parents worked, 9-year-old Benitez amused herself with heavy machinery. "I loved to drive the tractor," she remembered. It is not surprising this fearless young girl grew up to take on per- haps one of the most demanding nursing assignments imaginable: selecting, overseeing, and leading a team of seven nurses who assisted in the separation surgery of 9-month-old craniopagus con- joined twins, Micaela and Abigail Bachinskiy. Benitez spent 10 years as an ICU nurse and five years as a pedia- tric recovery room nurse at UC Davis Medical Center before finding her medical home in the operating room. It was a career change born out of personal experience after Benitez found herself waiting for her coworkers to bring her news on her then- 12-year-old daughter's prognosis following surgery to remove a tumor. "As a parent waiting for the diagnosis—Is this tumor cancer? Is this tumor not cancerous?—and going through that first hand, it really struck home," said Benitez. While her daughter did not have cancer, she did need long-term medical care. Benitez quickly real- ized she could no longer watch parents go through what she had gone through, prompting her move to the operating room. "There was a need for nurses who wanted to train in neurosur- gery and I picked it up," said Benitez. When the hospital needed someone to organize a fetal team, she said she "naturally slipped into the role." She started developing protocols and began managing large cases that were high risk and high profile. She worked with the team on fetal cases to treat spina bifida—"We deliver the babies, fix the problem, and then tuck them back into mom"—and the smaller cases where surgeons use "cameras and lasers to ablate vessels that are preventing the babies from growing." When the lead pediatric neurosurgeon, Dr. Michael Edwards, asked Benitez in January to lead the nursing team for the twins' sur- gery, she was thrilled. "I was blown away. I had no idea what I was getting into, but I was excited," said Benitez, recalling the moment with laughter. Edwards said Benitez was the natural choice to lead the nurses because she is well respected, an excellent judge of character, and recognized not only for her knowledge and her commitment, but also her ability to get things done. "She is incredibly bright, and she is also incredibly compassion- ate," said Edwards. "She is compassionate for her nurses, she is compassionate for the support team, she gives people credit for what they do, and plus. She cared about the babies, she cared about the parents, she cared about the nurses taking care of the babies." Benitez said she knew experience and personality were important in picking the nurses. Top-notch skills were imperative, but so was the ability to be part of a team that would carry out the detailed and cho- reographed ballet involving a surgical team of more than 30 people. In choosing the two circulating nurses, Benitez went with two senior nurses. "They are the most respected," said Benitez referring to Chris Evans, RN and Andrew Obrien, RN. "They have seen it all, and they know it all." But even with 30 years as a nurse, Evans recognized they were moving into "uncharted territory" and she and the rest of the team well understood the high-risk nature of the endeavor. "The knowledge that we were doing the kind of a procedure where there was the chance of us coming out with only one baby liv- ing or no babies living was very daunting," said Evans. Part of Evans' responsibilities would be positioning the girls dur- ing the surgery. She worked with the wound care team to determine how best to carry out the five position changes scheduled in the sur- gery without leaving the girls with pressure sores. With each change of position for the girls would come a change of draping, all of which the team had to accomplish while maintain- ing a sterile field. In her planning, Benitez reached out to nurses who had assisted in separating conjoined twins in New York and in London. These 20 N A T I O N A L N U R S E W W W . N A T I O N A L N U R S E S U N I T E D . O R G O C T O B E R | N O V E M B E R | D E C E M B E R 2 0 2 0 Miracle Workers A peek into the elite team of UC Davis Medical Center operating room By Rachel Berger

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