Precepting in ortho

[Cari1030, RN]

I'm in my final quarter of nursing school, preparing for my preceptorship (which starts this week). I was initially placed in the OR, which is what I wanted, but the unit backed out last minute, so I was placed in ortho (not sure why? Maybe because of the high number of surgical cases?). I have been trying to freshen up on adult med surg care (diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, etc) since I'm sure many of the patients there have these sorts of additional issues, as well as reading up on various repairs and care of those (particularly hip repairs because that's where my brain goes with ortho, haha). However, my nursing school REALLY lacked in ortho/muscular skeletal care, so I'm trying to figure out what else I should read up or watch videos of. Any particular areas I should focus on? ?

[mmc51264, BSN, MSN, RN]

Spend some time with OT/PT and learn about precautions for each joint replacement (anterior and posterior hip precautions, dos and don'ts of knees). It is imperative that you learn good body mechanics so you don't hurt yourself helping ortho pts. If you are going to be dealing with spines, logrolling, c-spine precautions (including how to move them).

Pain management is key too! My best advice is Tylenol is underrated and you need to wake them up to give scheduled doses ?