One day

Katie,

I don't know if this will help, but I found out that many of the hospitals around here will let you shadow in the OR if you are interested in doing so on your own time. Some let you shadow with no requirements, and some let you shadow if you have already had clinical there and so completed their drug screen, immunization, other requirements. I found this out recently because I didn't get much exposure in the OR either.

Also, there are lots of really good threads with good descriptions of a day in the OR. They often have titles like what does an OR nurse do, what's the difference in scrub and circulator, new grad in OR, and I've seen a few that started out with titles such as is OR nursing real nursing. I found some on a search then I just ended up flipping through the threads reading the interesting ones. I learned alot about the job by doing that.

Good luck, hope that helps.

Methodist in Dallas will has an externship for nursing students all summer long. They will give you OR if you want it. I had friends who did it and they loved it. They got to work in every room seeing all types of surgery.

I was interning as the scrub tech and they were assisting the circualting nurse.

Call HR at Methodist and check it out.

Thanks guys. :) I have also found a great blog here:

http://unsinkablemollybrown.blogspot.com/

She is a new OR nurse writing about her orientation and first days of work. Very interesting.

Katie