differences between or nursing in usa and uk

[fusionfire32]

hi,

i have been wondering what is so different in the two countries within the OR. firstly, i will tell you fantastic nurses my version of the uk. have you guys ever wondered what difference exists in different environment? in the Uk, we have a national health service as well as private health care. i work at one of the teaching university hospitals in the nhs. we have 16 operating rooms. my role involves scrubbing and circulating within the or. at a given time, we have one senior nurse who coordinates the smooth running of the list, one junior nurse who assists the senior nurse and one auxillary or health care assistant (not qualified). we also have on the anaesthetic side, a qualified nurse who is trained in assisting the anesthesist and can also assist in iv cannulation to start the anaesthetic process. the senior and junior nurses are the only people who can scrub and sometime assist the surgeon if the surgeon does not have any help from his team. we usually do our second checks with the qualified members. when senior nurse is scrubbed, the junior coordinates and helps the senior nurse by anticipating the operation. the health care assistant makes sure of adequate supplies available for the surgery also collects the patient from the reception area. they can also deal with specimens.

this is just to start a discussion. pls contribute your experiences.

[Libitina]

You forgot to mention the ODP's!

In UK theatres nurses and operating department practitioners are interchangeable.

[fusionfire32]

hi,

that is true. odps do interchangably work as a scrub or as anaesthetics. and they are professionals in their own right. what can our american counterpart add to this discussion.

[FlyOR]

We-ell, I will give this a shot. I work at a 20+ room OR in the states and it sounds somewhat similar, just the names change. Ours is a teaching hospital, so usually the surgeons have a Fellow/ resident that assists them with the actual surgery, but once in a while the scrub will function in more of a "First Assist" role, barring any actual suturing.

We have a Circulating nurse, basically this nurse runs the room. Run being the operative room. Equipment, watching the patient, positioning, specimen labeling and sending, charting etc. The other nursing staff may be another RN or a surgical tech, who works under the circulator's license. They are only allowed to scrub. We have internal core techs who turn the rooms over after the surgery and who basically function as go-fers. They run the specimens to the lab, acquire a special bed, or other things that the circulator cannot leave the room for.

The anesthesiologist may also have a Fellow/resident or may work alone. We do have Certified Nurse Anesthetists and they work under the anesthesiologist, who may have more than one room to cover.

A bare bones staff in my OR would consist of a circulating nurse, a scrub tech, a surgeon and an anesthesiologist. A core tech would come in only after the surgery was over to clean the room.

Hope this helps.

[fusionfire32]

fantastic start. the core techs as you call it, over here we have porters who help with positioning, bed fetching, transporting patient before surgery, and also they sort out our supplies received from the suppliers and stock them. we also have a dedicated stock controller who ensures adequate stocks are ordered provided we have enough money.