OR Fellowship- first job?!

[saramo]

Hey all, I have been reading your posts on here for a while but just joined recently. It seems like a great community.

I am interviewing for an Operating Room Fellowship in a few days, and I was wondering if anyone had any experiences going into this as your first job out of nursing school. I am interested in either OR, ICU or ER, and this is the first callback I have received from one of those areas. Do you recommend taking this type of job on as a first experience out of school? It comes with a 2 1/2 year commitment (with a 9,000$ fee if you leave early), so it is a serious commitment. I welcome any advice on this as well as anyone who has gone through a similar fellowship (5 1/2 months).

Thanks!

[RNJohnny23]

I took a job, not a fellowship (not sure what the fellowship entails exactly) as my first job. If it's right for you, you'll know in a month or less, but give yourself a year or two to become competent. Others may not be so nice to you, or downright mean, but that's not the way everyone in surgery is and that's not the way all surgery departments are run.

I have spent 9 years in the OR and enjoyed it very much; however, you should really examine your goals for after your first job. I don't see many NP's or CNS's in surgery. Some, but not many. Mostly PA's and CRNA's. CST's do most of the scrubbing and in some places there are Anesthesia Tech's. In that situation, you do very little (in my OR XP I served as the Anesthesia Tech/Circulator). If you have aspirations beyond being an RN and working in the OR and you aren't interested in being a manager or educator, then you might look elsewhere for your first experience. It's not as easy to change specialties as schools make it sound. It's possible, but hard. So examine your goals and find out where would be the best place to achieve them.

[Goobstress]

RNJohnny is right. I hired into OR as my first job and did their periop 101 program and was their first nurse right out of school and apparently it worked out for me because I was a clean slate they could mold with no bad habits. OR nurses are very territorial by nature and eat their young but after proving yourself and learning as you go, within a year or two it's great. Call is definitely something you'll have to deal with cause being a newbie you'll definitely have to take a bunch.