How many of you both circulate AND scrub?

Specialties Operating Room

Published

Is it very often that RN's get to scrub in on surgeries, or are the RN's more exclusively becoming circulators while the surg techs take over scrubbing in?

I'm a Surgical Technologist (working on becoming an RN) and our staff has more RNs so we have a lot of nurses who scrub. Some nurses primarily scrub and hardly circulate at all because of their preference and we are short on scrubs. Our nurses learn to scrub in their orientation so we have a lot who go back and forth a lot.

Specializes in Operating Room.

I scrub and circulate and in my current OR, they do utilize me to scrub, which I like.

Specializes in PACU, OR.

I work at a level one trauma hospital and the majority of the staff are rn's who scrub and circulate, however we do have some ST. As rn's in the or there is no "I just scrub" or "I can only circulate". With OR experience or not we all go through our orientation learning how to do both through each service and are expected to do both after orientation.

Specializes in Surgery.

Depends on the facility, RN's routinely scrubbed where I worked.

It's funny. We have more techs than nurses right now in our main OR (techs were hired to save money rather than hire more nurses), so whoever can circulate does, but we have a new policy that new RNs who don't have a BSN can only scrub. Interesting, considering we frequently have to rely on travelers.... our cardiothoracic OR and women's surgery, which are in different buildings to the main and ASC ORs, often have RNs scrubbing in. It's a shame, too, since I've heard from many an RN who wished they could scrub more so they could learn the cases better.

I'm starting NS this Spring and want to be an OR nurse. Don't you need experience in both circulating and scrubbing in order to get the CNOR? Why would a facility not give their nurses the opportunity to earn their certification?

Specializes in OR, Nursing Professional Development.
I'm starting NS this Spring and want to be an OR nurse. Don't you need experience in both circulating and scrubbing in order to get the CNOR? Why would a facility not give their nurses the opportunity to earn their certification?

No, the certification does not specify whether scrub/circulate/both. It only specifies that one must have completed 2400 hours in periop/1200 hours in the actual OR/ 2 years experience.

Specializes in OR, Nursing Professional Development.
I'm starting NS this Spring and want to be an OR nurse. Don't you need experience in both circulating and scrubbing in order to get the CNOR? Why would a facility not give their nurses the opportunity to earn their certification?

No, the certification does not specify whether scrub/circulate/both. It only specifies that one must have completed 2400 hours in periop/1200 hours in the actual OR/2 years periop experience.

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