Need advice in terms of working in surgery

[Ral]

Hey,

I am an international nurse who have been offered a job in surgery, and I have fear as I have never worked in surgery before apart from clinical rotation in nursing school (which was not in Canada). My past experience have been in obs, gyn from home and medical and oncology in Canada.

I need some advice from those nurses who work in surgery, how is it working in surgery? do u think I will be able to learn and implement.

I do understand some surgery patients have medical problems, so i might be able use my medical experience but it's the nursing care for surgery patients which i am concerned about, and also not been aware of surgical procedures.

I am wondering is it worth taking the risk in order to learn and this will give me some experience in surgery too....

Your advice will be highly appreciated and will give me some direction.

Thanks,

[nbnurse95]

Hi Ral, I've been working on a surgical unit for almost 10 years and I love it. Yes, many of our pts also have medical conditions; COPD, cardiac probs., diabetes, you name it. I think your experience would help you on a surgical unit for sure. Plus, you'll probably receive orientation on your new unit and like the rest of us, you'll learn a lot as you go. Always ask questions when you're unsure of a procedure and always look up the policies and read the procedure manual. We were all new to this at one time.

Good Luck!! :)

[suzanne4, RN]

Are you speaking of actually working in the operating room or on a post-surgery unit? Either way, you will receive an orientation to cover what you will need. As a foreign nurse coming to either Canada or the US, you can expect about a 12 week orientation on average, so don't worry about getting thrown to the wolves the first week. :)