Any OR nurses out there?

Published Aug 3, 2019

RNStrong2014

2 Posts

I have a problem where I’m working. I need some outside perspective and advice.

Background: I have a few years bedside experience. Switched and did a Peri-Op 6 month training program in April 2018 with a 2 year contract. Halfway through training, the OR Director and OR manager were fired and the OR Assistant Director transferred to the floor. We had temporary management and hired on a new OR Director and OR Manager the beginning of this year.

New management created “specialty teams”. The main longtime Urology circulator retired and chose me to take her place. I had a 3 week crash course on Urology before she retired and I was off orientation on my own to be the new main Urology circulator (along with General when no Urology cases). I became the Urology Team Lead a few months later.

My Urology “team” is myself, a new grad RN who is doing very well, a newly hired scrub tech with Urology scrubbing experience and a scrub tech we “borrow” who’s mostly in my rooms. I pull from other teams when I need more staff to run rooms. I try to keep myself in the hallway to resource multiple rooms, but I will circulate as well. Gotta do whatever needs to be done. (That’s not a problem).

I kill myself everyday doing everything under the sun to make the rooms run smooth, take some of the load off the staff in my rooms, and keep the Urologists happy. I do breaks/lunches, turn around the rooms, runner, flip rooms, bring down case carts/soft goods, whatever needs to be done.

Nurses, techs, and orderlies are quitting left and right due to a toxic work environment involving significant favoritism, over working the same individuals while others either hide or sit at the desk, lack of accountability, and management acknowledges what is going on, but doesn’t do anything. We have lost 10 staff in the last 2 months. I have talked to our director and manager about this concerns and problems.

I’m tired of killing myself trying to turn crap into gold, my team working our butts off with what we got and always needing to “improve” when what we need to be better is not being given to us (more staff, people in the OR acting like a team instead of available staff in the hall being lazy and choosing to not lend a hand with anything).

My hubby is joining the military and currently waiting to go to MEPS. Then it will be shipping out to basic training, tech school, and us being stationed somewhere. I know the smart decision: stay until we get stationed and have less to pay back of the contract when I break it. I just can’t deal with working at this place and how it runs. Being taken advantage of, actions never being good enough, favoritism, complaints from surgeons with things beyond our control, etc. The list goes on and on.

No point in leaving, and working at a new place for only a couple months. My hubby has given me advice, but I’d like some feedback from those that know the workings of the OR and what can be done to make working here the next few months more bearable.

I’m open to feedback! I’m doing the best I can and I have tried different things to make it better, but for the sake not making this post longer, I won’t go into long details. Please help a fellow nurse sister out because I’m at my wits end! ????