RNninja

That is a tough question to answer. I feel like with the right training a new grad could thrive in PACU. I came from multiple other areas before getting into PACU. I feel like the experience that I gained in the other areas of nursing really help me in the PACU setting. I'm not sure the type of hospital or size that you are going into, but it is not uncommon for me to be alone at work, especially when I'm on call. Sure there are other RNs and Drs in the OR but if something happens I need to be able to act fast and be confident in my skills because it may take them awhile to get to me. I think that working in other high acuity settings have helped me with that.

This is how ours works. Say I'm giving 25 of Fentanyl from a 100 vial. We pull up the whole 100 but only give 25. Then we still have 75 left to give. The same vial gets scanned again.

I work in a smaller hospital with 6 OR rooms. I take call once a week and every fifth weekend. We schedule our holidays out years ahead of time. All the staff is very flexible with switching shifts when needed too. We don't have a night shift so there is no nurse staffed for nights. If I am on call and get called in I rely on my circulator to be my second RN if trouble arises. Unfortunately that gets rough sometimes when there are multiple call cases. Most times I'm alone on call but my team is close by and there is always someone to come assist if needed. All in all I love working in recovery. I have done card tele, OR, ED, step down... this is by far my favorite job path I have taken as an RN. I get time with patients, mostly without family, I don't keep them long like on the floor, I have less frequents, I sometimes get to have fun conversations with my patients, and best of all I still get my critical care patients. The difference with my critical care patients is that I can actually devote my attention to them and I have a full team of other RNs and Drs as close back up if needed. Depending on the size of the hospital and the amount of locum surgeons you use, you really develop close relationships with your anesthesiologists and physicians.

What I am saying here is just based off of my perception of what you have wrote. Please don't take any of this harshly. Firstly it sounds like you have a real passion for ICU nursing. You are going home after long stressful days and continuing to educate and better yourself! That is awesome! ICU is a tough gig, A level one trauma ICU is about a rough as you can get. A lot of new grads aren't ready for that yet. I'm not saying you aren't, but most aren't. There are many hospitals that will only hire RNs with experience for those positions. You said you have been struggling with your second preceptor. Was this a scheduled change from your first preceptor or did they give you another preceptor because it wasn't working out with the first one? When you said that she is picking on you what do you mean? I ask because this is sometimes a perception that people have when they get criticism. When I started in an OR I had a doctor talk to me about how a patient was prepped for a surgery. After the conversation was over a tech came up to me and said that he shouldn't have spoken to me that way. I didn't understand because he just spoke clearly and concisely on how things should be done properly but she took it that he was being demeaning to me. You said she spoke condescendingly to you in front of patients. I'm not saying that she didn't because I wasn't there but was she really trying to be mean or was that how you perceived it? What was the situation there? In ICU some mistakes or misshapes can seriously injure or kill a patient. Was she stopping you from doing something detrimental to the patient before it happened? I have precepted many new RNs and it is a hard thing but sometimes I had to say that maybe the position wasn't for them. When I precepted the one big thing always in the back of my mind is my patients and their safety. What comes of to you as callous and her picking on you may just be because she believes that you are not ready for that type of nursing role yet. All that being said if this is really what you want keep working for it. But you saying that you are going home extremely stressed and crying every night is no way to live. My suggestion would be to see about getting into another position for a year or two just for you to develop your nursing chops. With your passion for critical care, something like a stepdown or cardiac unit would be a good start. This would give you time to grow as a nurse and really develop your critical thinking skills. Once again I'm not saying any of this to be mean just trying to give another perspective. I almost quit nursing myself in the first 6 months as an RN. Luckily my charge talked me out of walking that night. Now I couldn't see myself doing anything else. Remember in nursing there are always other options and sometimes you don't know you really like something until you try it. I started with a passion for cardiac and telemetry and wanting to end up in ED. I did both of those and kinda slid into doing OR circulating and recovery nursing, now I can't imagine doing anything else! Good luck with what ever you choose!

So to preface, I'm a nurse newer (1 year) to the OR. I have worked as a cardiac tele nurse for about 5 years before switching. I took a job to circulate and specialize in the heart room. The facility I work in is small, 6 rooms with a hybrid heart/cath lab. When I interviewed for the job I was told that I would have a lot of call, which turned out to be 3, at the most 4 days a week. Which I was fine with. My call consisted of only heart cases. We have a team consisting of 3 heart specialized nurses that only take heart call, another 3 general OR nurses that pick up heart and general call, and 2 more general OR nurses that only take general call. For heart call they always want 2 nurses available for a case. The beginning of summer one of the general OR nurses that also took heart call had a baby and went on leave. This left only 6 nurses in our OR to take call. It was decided that only the 3 heart room specialized nurses could take heart call while the other 3 nurses would take general. With it being required to have 2 nurses on for hearts at any time, we were on call for at the very least 22 days out of the month. This, I was told was temporary. I was still OK with it since I have really come to love working in the OR. This amount of call destroyed my summer. Even on my days off I was usually on call. Which meant that I couldn't really go anywhere. Plus no occasional adult beverages for me. No impromptu trips. Now the nurse is back from maternity leave but not much has changed. We are taking a little less call. Next month only 19 days, no no full weekends off. Now we are also being used as a second team for vascular surgery if they run late. We have a vascular surgeon (great guy and surgeon) that sometimes can't start cases until afternoon, these cases can run 10+ hours. Now we are told that since we are on call to come in late for these cases so that we can stay late for them. Which staying late is OK. I'm on call so I expect it but we are not getting out call pay since we are coming in late. From what I understand general call only takes 1-2 days of call a week and only 1 weekend a month. I am wondering what other RNs call schedule is, especially RNs in specialized areas. As much as I love being an OR nurse, my coworkers, and physicians I work with daily I also love having a life outside of they hospital. Since this is my first position in OR I am wondering if this is the norm. I really don't want to leave the OR but if this is how it is I might have to. Thank you for any feedback, I am at a loss for what to do.