Orientation question!!!!!

[luckyduck7]

Hello everybody,

I have been on orientation for circulator for 2 weeks. Many of my coworkers say I make a good team member and that I fit in well already but I feel like a fish out of water! I am so anxious to be good at what I do that I'm making myself nuts. Everyone keeps saying, "don't be so hard on yourself".

But the problem is, I feel like my orientation would be a lot smoother if they'd have started me in general cases and gyn, then moved me up to the more intricate cases like ortho but instead they just bounce me around every day and I don't know which end is up anymore! My 3rd day, I was in a AAA repair, then the next day I was back in gyn, then the next in ortho. There is no logic to it at all.

wouldn't it make more sense if they let me get a basic grasp of one simpler area before they drop the bomb on me, so to speak? I feel that a consistent orientation with say, a few days in each specialty would greatly benefit me as well as the other staff, since I will be on my own in 3 months and I will be working 3-11, which is a shift at my hospital that a) No one wants, and b) I will be the only circulator on that shift!!!!! I know that my scrub nurse and other seasoned staff will be more than willing to help me when I'm on my own, but I still don't see how I can benefit from this strange, flip floppy orientation!

I want to speak to my managers about this on Monday, but I don't want them to think I know it all or anything. I just feel that they have too many other things going on and they aren't truly paying attention to what room they send me in. A lot of the staff agrees with me!

Anyhow, I do truly love the O.R. but I want to be a good nurse down there, and I don't feel my orientation is fair to me, let alone my other staff members.

Also, were any of you scared to absolute death of contaminating the sterile field? I am! I'm even afraid to "pop" the sterile equipment onto a sterile field. My hands pretty much are shaking when I do it!!! Will that feeling ever go away? And when will I start to feel a little more confident? It truly is hard to be the new kid on the block, especially since I felt so confident when I was a "floor nurse".

Thanks for listening,

Nicole

[mikethern]

I heard that now they mostly use scrub techs instead of nurses. That makes me sad because I am more interested in being a scrub nurse than in circulating. Ah well. As long as I'm in the OR I'll be happy.

Look on the bright side. Although catching a disease from a patient is rare, circulators have less chance of catching HIV or hepatitis than do scrub nurses.

[PeachyERNurse, BSN, RN]

What exactly does a circulator nurse do?

[mikethern]

What exactly does a circulator nurse do?

http://www.aorn.org/default.asp

Click "about AORN", then click "what is perioperative nursing."

[mcmike55]

Keep in mind, orientation to the OR is not your normal orientation.

A specialty like OR takes a lot longer to orient, than like to the general floor, you'll be under someone's wing, and not able to go on your own for a while.

In my OR, a new nurse is assigned to a mentor, and only one person. This really helps the learning process, eliminating what you described, as being bounced around too much. That said, in a small hospital like mine, it's not unusual to do cystos, then to GYN and follow that with ortho in the same day. So some bouncing is sort of nature of the beast. When the next day's assignments are being set, our charge nurse lets the mentor choose the room they want. If they want to focus on a certain area, or bounce a little, work pre op, or what ever the new nurse and mentor talk it out and decide.

As the new nurse starts to get their feet under them, the mentor reels out the leash a little as it were. Maybe letting them insert the foley, while the mentor helps with the induction, and so on.

In my experience, a nurse that has little to no OR experience figure at least 6 months before really going out on their own, considerably less for experienced OR nurses.

By the way, a new nurse takes call with their mentor for a while, then takes first call with the mentor following them as their experience and compentency grows.

Scrub tech orientation pretty much the same. We don't use RN scrubs not too cost effective. Some of our RN's can and do scrub on occasion. I love to scrub when I can, especially Ortho.

Hope that helps some.

Mike

[luckyduck7]

Actually, Mike, that did help. Your hospital sounds so much more organized than mine when it comes to orienting. I think even I could do a better job of planning my orientation than anyone else is doing!!! I think it's a great idea that you only have one mentor with the orientee. Sigh. Too bad.

I get a few really good people orienting me, and then there's two who should absolutely not be teaching. They barely even look at me let alone tell me anything. I finally let my manager know that it was pretty much impossible to learn when with those two, and to my suprise she agreed. This doesn't mean I can't work with people-I'm usually a great team member... I just need to be given some solid education right now. I can't even believe how those guys treat me!

Anyway, to anyone that has replied to my questions, I appreciate it. It really helps to know I'm not alone. This is my dream job, but it really has been a rough month, and I don't really see an end in sight!!!!:uhoh21: