Good OR experience for traveling

[Nuru]

My wife has the opportunity to take an OR job at another hospital and would really like to go over there. The issue is that it's a smaller hospital. Our plan is to travel in 3 years to facilitate our sailing adventures. She currently has been an RN for 4 years (was a LPN for 4) with mostly med surg experience.

So her question is; how good of experience does working in a smaller hospital (level 3 trauma, 65 beds med surg) that does just general surgery? Is she going to get good experience in a place like that compared to the mega hospital we work at how? (one of the top 5 hospitals in the country)

[NedRN]

Not as good obviously. Won't have the number of services, nor the different kind of cases she can see at the "mega" hospital. Even more important, it is unlikely to offer the kind of training (didactic and practical education with preceptors and a dedicated OR educator) that a large hospital has: around 9 months versus 3 months max at a smaller hospital.

3 years in such a hospital is good grounding indeed for travel. I did three years myself. Would have been fine personally with two years in a similar teaching hospital but I stayed an extra year to get comfortable in CVOR.

I'd try asking current employer for a switch. May or may not have to wait for their periop 101 to start, but if you can start now, 3 years is optimal as they may well require a two year contract to get some of their enormous investment back.

But if the smaller hospital is your only foot in the door, do it! I've certainly met OR nurses who have trained at smaller hospitals and have learned well. Sometimes there are joint ventures between hospitals to train OR nurses as no one small hospital can really afford it. You will get a lot more opinions in the OR subforum than here so see what they say. Don't mention travel (perhaps just say you are looking to move after three years) at first as the moderators may swoosh the whole thread back to here. Instead rather ask about best training opportunities. There should be a lot of threads there already on this very topic so you could just skim those instead.

[Nuru]

1 hour ago, NedRN said:

Not as good obviously. Won't have the number of services, nor the different kind of cases she can see at the "mega" hospital. Even more important, it is unlikely to offer the kind of training (didactic and practical education with preceptors and a dedicated OR educator) that a large hospital has: around 9 months versus 3 months max at a smaller hospital.

3 years in such a hospital is good grounding indeed for travel. I did three years myself. Would have been fine personally with two years in a similar teaching hospital but I stayed an extra year to get comfortable in CVOR.

I'd try asking current employer for a switch. May or may not have to wait for their periop 101 to start, but if you can start now, 3 years is optimal as they may well require a two year contract to get some of their enormous investment back.

But if the smaller hospital is your only foot in the door, do it! I've certainly met OR nurses who have trained at smaller hospitals and have learned well. Sometimes there are joint ventures between hospitals to train OR nurses as no one small hospital can really afford it. You will get a lot more opinions in the OR subforum than here so see what they say. Don't mention travel (perhaps just say you are looking to move after three years) at first as the moderators may swoosh the whole thread back to here. Instead rather ask about best training opportunities. There should be a lot of threads there already on this very topic so you could just skim those instead.

Thanks for the reply, it's sort of what I expected to hear. Though is there a point where a hospital is so big that you get to niche in your department. For example I know that our hospital separates their OR nurses into several areas. So when you take a job you're not taking an "OR RN" job you're taking a GI OR job or a Colorectal OR job. So would you end up being so specialized that you're not marketable?

[NedRN]

So yes, even smaller hospitals may have specialty teams. It certainly is possible to travel with a focus in a specialty, but other than the extreme example of CVOR, most hospitals will expect you to float to other services. You can refuse an assignment if you feel like it wouldn't be safe (your nursing license requires such judgement), and this is fairly common.

The advantage of starting in a large teaching hospital is you will be spending a significant time in each specialty, perhaps two or more weeks, and an attempt by your preceptor to expose you to most surgeries in that specialty. It is still a pretty intense learning experience and while you may feel like you don't get it at the time, I am still surprised about what I can pull out from that time even 25 years later when needed.

A better initial orientation provides a better foundation. You will experience new stuff at every assignment and a good grounding improves your chance of success, and fun even!