OR considered acute care?

Purple_Clover · Mar 31, 2017

The way I see it, OR would help you understand a lot about how procedures work and what to expect after them. However, I would think that working on the floor may be more beneficial for an acute care NP position: it's where the majority of the care happens in the acute care setting.

Scottishtape · Mar 31, 2017

I may be wrong, but I do not believe OR is considered critical care.

shan_elle · Mar 31, 2017

I love the idea of becoming an OR nurse, and sometime in the future, I would like to become an acute care nurse practitioner one day. I am worried if experience as an OR nurse may not be considered acute care? Or would it? Is there certain advice/a specialty within the OR that could be considered acute care? Any advice/info regarding this would be appreciated.
Thank you in advance! :)

The OR is it's own specialty and is not considered acute care. The OR is much more technical, whereas the acute units are more skills and assessment based. For example, if you're an OR scrub nurse you will check the surgical tools to ensure they're sterile, pass instruments to the surgeon, help apply dressings, and count tools after surgery. If you're an OR circulating nurse you act as the patient advocate, adjust settings on machines, communicate with family members, and carry out other non-sterile tasks. They also get the patient from pre-op and place the foley. I don't necessarily believe this, but a scrub nurse once told me that "OR nursing is not real nursing." You just don't have the same autonomy you do in other settings and don't use a lot of the skills you learn in nursing school. However, if you prefer your patients to be sedated and you really like anatomy, OR nursing may be a good fit for you.

Acute nursing is completely different and there are a variety of different units to work on (orthopedics, cardiac, trauma, medicine, etc.). Depending on where you work you could be assigned anywhere from 4 to 8 patients. You will be responsible for administering their medications, changing dressings, performing assessments, checking vital signs, toileting and ambulating patients, paging doctors to adjust/stop treatments, and a whole lot more!! Of course there are usually nursing aides and interdisciplinary team members to help with some tasks, but ultimately you are responsible for what happens at the bedside. Many more of the skills you learn in nursing school will apply to an acute care job.

Are you in a nursing program or still doing pre-reqs? Once you do your clinicals in nursing school and see what each area is really like you might change your mind.

Dodongo, APRN, NP · Apr 7, 2017

Anything in the hospital is acute care. Med-surg floors, OR, cath lab, ICU - all of it is under the umbrella of acute care. Acute care NPs are NPs who are trained in hospital based medicine. As opposed to FNPs who are trained in outpatient medicine. Now, many ACNP programs require ICU experience because they are heavily focused on ICU medicine. I am in an ACNP program that required 2 years of ICU experience. And it had to be ICU, no other acute care area would suffice.

I would recommend getting OR experience under your belt at some point. I would start in ICU, then after a couple years drop to casual in ICU and get an OR job. This would set you up perfectly to be an ACNP/RNFA. This way you can first assist in surgery as an NP (and bill) and then round pre/post operatively. This is what I'm training for currently.