Changing Specialty from OR advice needed

[buckmarko]

I have been an OR nurse for 10 years. It has mainly been minimal part time (32 hrs every 2 weeks). I have stayed home with my children, but worked to keep my skills. Lately I haven't been very happy at work. I have considered changing specialties, but I have only ever worked in surgery. No floor experience whatsoever. I still only want to work part-time. I have no idea what other areas I could work. Have any of you ever been in this situation where you did a career/specialty change from surgery? How did you take the steps to do it? Do you have any suggestions for me? Some of my interests are home health/hospice, school nurse, dialysis just to name a few. Any feedback would be appreciated. Thanks.

[tghsicole]

I too spent over 10 yrs in the OR. However, I had prior 3 yrs MED/SURG floor experience. I presently am working in a surgical transplant ICU. It is difficult to transition into another area without committing to train on a fulltime basis. OR, unlike ICU and some other specialties is not an area one can easily move to another specialty quickly. Some skills like time management, pharmacology, and nursing skills are lost if one only does the OR. However, that being written, you do have an RN license. You can still try to venture into other areas. I am just writing that your 10yr OR experience only--limits you to surgery centers, private nursing for a surgeon, insurance companies or a doctors office.

[Scrubby]

I too spent over 10 yrs in the OR. However, I had prior 3 yrs MED/SURG floor experience. I presently am working in a surgical transplant ICU. It is difficult to transition into another area without committing to train on a fulltime basis. OR, unlike ICU and some other specialties is not an area one can easily move to another specialty quickly. Some skills like time management, pharmacology, and nursing skills are lost if one only does the OR. However, that being written, you do have an RN license. You can still try to venture into other areas. I am just writing that your 10yr OR experience only--limits you to surgery centers, private nursing for a surgeon, insurance companies or a doctors office.

I strongly disagree that time management and nursing skills are lost if you only work in OR. Positioning patients, providing emotional support, maintaining asepsis, advocating for unconscoius patients and nursing assessments are skills I use everyday. Time management is a very important skill in OR-ensuring to ensure that turn over times are low, setting up the OR for each case, not taking too long leaving the room to get sterile extras etc.

[tghsicole]

Let me just write that while we may use time management with room turnover, etc. it only involves dealing with one patient at a time not 2 to 3 pt in ICU or 4+ pts on a med/surg floor.An OR nurse has a very intense responsibility. The responsibilities of most other nursing specialties involves the nurse providing emotional support to patients, families, and being responsible for administering drugs, care and treatments.Transporting patients to and from other departments for MRI, Radiology, etc. In the OR the responsibility is shared with a team of people inclusive of anesthesia, surgeons, and scrub nurses. All the while I am caring for one patient not a list of them.

[MERRYWIDOW46]

I did it, however, I had a year of Med/Surg and a year of ICU prior to going to the OR so many years ago. After 10 years of OR I went to CCU with minimal orientation. It CAN be done. I stayed PRN in the OR though. I later went into administration for 10 years. THAT is when I had a problem getting a bedside job again. My dear departed husband became seriously ill and I wanted to go back to the bedside and give up the lifestyle of an administrative nurse. I was told, "You were in administration for 10 years and before that you were THAT OR NURSE, what skills do you bring?????" Well, I was determined, I worked for a start up agency for 6 months, retaught myself all the critical care I needed and in 6 months was working FT in a hospital. JUST be DILIGENT. DO NOT take no for an answer. Somewhere, someone will give you a chance just like I got. It may take a while though, especially in this economy. I now have a great Float Pool job and stay PRN at 2 surgery centers to maintain my OR/PACU skills.

Good Luck.

[katkonk, BSN, RN]

I work in surgery centers in PACU through an agency. Sometimes I go to plastics practices, and they often use nurses with OR skills to do not only OR nursing, but they rotate through pre-op and PACU as well. There is also the clinic part of it. When business is slow, they don't work as much. When they have a really busy day or it turns into a long day, they stay....so it requires a bit of flexibility. Something like that...a practice where they have clinic and various other duties, while still allowing you to use your OR skills might be an excellent fit for you. And I bet you could likely find a surgical specialty that needs part time help near your home as well. The plastics nurses also get great benefits working for the private practice....like FREE procedures after one year! ha! But, of course there are other specialties that do a lot of procedures in the office as well. And, of course you get patient time-teaching and instructing pre-op as well as post-op care.