[hinkley]

If the medical staff influence the delivery time, they in turn are influenced by everything else, like vendors and traffic accidents. While obstetricians are not fungible with trauma surgeons, and nurses are only slightly more fungible (because they tend to work in a particular ward), they all have to deal with the pharmacy and anesthesiology, etc. I don’t know if they share surgical theaters, but you can’t reuse a surgery until it is clean and functioning, I think those crews would definitely be floating.

I don’t know much of anything about the other people in the OR, if the assistants stick to a particular group of surgeons or float. The people handling tools and gauze pads (which sounds like a dumb job but someone has to be sure that 12 pads and a clamp went into your abdomen and exactly that number came back out at the end), clamps, retraction, suction, IV and gas monitoring, etc etc. Those are somewhat specialized to the task but I don’t know if they are specialized to a surgical unit or if the same people who help with a appendectomy also assist with a finger reattachment or spinal surgery. If they do a surgery could get bumped for scheduling conflicts, or shift changes.