servantleader2020

You are very for the union and there is nothing wrong with that. I will not disclose the facility in California but many years later I stand by my post. Unionize or die.

You are such a pleasant human. Thank you.

Overview: This post is a comical look at what it takes to be an OR nurse, and the skills that you must develop or sharpen in the craft of developing your operating room "armour" When I think of the most looney symbol that can personify the OR nurse I think of the Wile E. Coyote. I view him as the hero in the cartoon series. No matter how many times he does not succeed he still holds a constant humility, determination, still develops ambitious plans, and is always hungry for more. These traits translate very well to the operating room setting. Sometimes no matter how well your plan of care is for the most routine case you are bound to be confronted with some outlandish problem that has never happened before. Whether it be you cant find a wall outlet when you need one, your equipment gas tank has somehow gone empty, that pack of 10 sponges when counted is actually a pack of 9 on initial count. The surgeon is the road runner at some points. changing the path of the procedure and subsequently curving your perfectly constructed plan for how the procedure will go. Sometimes there will be some verbal banter from the surgeon that causes the nurse to feel belittled because of this unpredictable change of plans. This behavior can often be very aggressive and threatening. But fear not.. you as the Wile E. Coyote the hero, the protagonist of the ACME operating room desert landscape follow three simple rules. RULE #1: the road runner cannot harm the coyote except by going "beep-beep." - thats right, you as the nurse have rights and are in fact a human being under your cap and mask. Your bomb for road runner actually blew up in your own face and all the road runner can do to you at the end of the day is go "beep-beep" and stick his tongue out real nasty. roadrunner will never touch coyote, ever. RULE #2: no outside force can harm the coyote - only his own ineptitude or the failure of the ACME products. - the only person that can hurt yourself is you and your equipment in the operating room. keep your calm, keep your own pace. do not hurt yourself cause the road runner wants to run fast on a new road that you did not construct a trap for. check your equipment in the morning, don't trip on a power cord, don't cut yourself on a sharp corner of the bovie, and don't break your back for the surgeons time. RULE #3: the coyote could stop anytime - if he were not a fanatic - TIMEOUT is an important power for the operating room nurse. Do not be so derailed with your plan and rattled that you forget your prioritization. Everyone on the team will be wanting something at the change in the road. YOU NEED A MINUTE. take a few seconds atleast to put your thinking cap on instead of running around wildly in a single-minded approach. Lets talk about you needing a minute. you want to be assertive and not aggressive in this situation. these two terms can become confusing. You can be assertive without be aggressive. what is being assertive? It is to declare your point of view and not feel as if you need anothers approval or validation. - confidently communicating your position on a matter. - share a dissenting opinion. - asking the offender to lower his/her voice or to change his/her tone. - explaining your situation and problem with whats being said and maintaining eye contact. - declining the request if you do not feel comfortable - suggest another person who may be able to help the requester. Remove yourself from the situation. Be safe out there my fellow coyotes.

1. It took me a year and a half 2. never coded but it happens. Save the patient. If they die they dint have to worry about infection. 3. anesthesia, surgeon, tech, circulator 4. bovie and sooo many other things. Be patient. You won’t know it all in one day. 5. no. I use to. You will learn. Once you know the why you will be ahead of them. 6. must be a good communicator, stand up for what you think is right, how you decide to do it is up to you

this is a story that I have been wanting to tell for some time. the idea of typing these words gives me an energy that trembles me to my core. I have practiced nursing for no longer than 2 years but I have so much to say. I have an extensive leadership background and once immersed into the lunacy of this field I realize there is a deficiency. I started at a trauma one education hospital in the operating room. during orientation I was the only one to not sign a union contract. my reasoning you ask? I didn't believe in unions after the weekend was established back when unions were needed. I believed that unions in the current day served the purpose of robing people of their money but now I believe they serve a new purpose. during my orientation they made a public announcement that there was ONE person that had not signed up and that this was a fleeting opportunity, this was my last chance. I did not sign up. the training resembled less of an education and more of a hazing gaslight model. I started off as a promising candidate and was publicly announced as one in front of my cohort. things were looking great prospectively. as the weeks went on in my 6 month orientation to the operating room I looked less and less as a promising candidate. by month 3 I was called into the supervisors office for questioning as to why I was not at the appropriate developmental stage as my other peers in the operating room. I was at the same stage as others. we did rotations every month from one service line to the next. I rotated through head and neck, robotics, kidney transplant, gyn, endocrinology. I scrubbed and I circulated. my preceptors were less than kind. I was sabotaged, I was harassed, I was humiliated. it got to the point that I went home and no longer recognized myself for the person that I new myself to be, I went on antidepressants. my educator, the woman that was there to protect and progress me was using my words against me. the educator was there for meetings that would implicate me. and in the free time of surgery I was called aside by her into empty operating rooms with my preceptor of the day and they would ask me what was wrong with me and how I can improve. the examples of imprecation were this: "you seemed to have prepped the patients skin too wide from the incision site, it seemed like you didn't even know what surgery you were doing" "did you know by using two chloroprep sticks to prep the field that you are using a skin irritant and are causing undue stress to the patient" they called me into a room the size of of a closet to practice my interviewing skills. they said I touched my ear lobe too much during talking to the patients and I appeared nervous. I was to perform my interview in front of my nursing supervisor, my preceptor, and my educator. I attempted my interview using them as mock patients. start over they said, my interview was not good. start over again they said, I still needed to work on the interview. why not try saying this instead, they said, which was just a minor variation of what I was saying before. fast forward a day later, it is 7 am and my supervisor calls me out of the hallway to speak with me. she says, "what was that yesterday?" I say that I do not know and that I have lost my confidence severely because of such claims by my superiors. I am under investigation, it is my 3rd month in the operating room, she says that she will be my preceptor personally for one shift to get to the bottom of these claims. I agree but I never get to the appointment that she has set. one week later I am doing a general shift. my preceptor says that she trusts me and that I know how to drop off a specimen, I find that to be an odd statement because every preceptor prior would follow me to the specimen room to observe the drop off. It is an easy task and I walk to the room, I place the sticker, I log the specimen. as I walk down the hallway my preceptor of the day calls out to me. she says, "I cannot find the specimen nor the log of the patient name in the book" I flip for minutes till it is 30 minutes. I flipped into my lunch break and I could not find the material that I had vividly registered. they had found a way to get rid of me. you see, to lose a specimen in the OR is the equivalent of turning in your resignation. they had turned my resignation in for me. I left the facility after that. I felt as though I was crazy. this was my first nursing job but by no means not my first job ever. by knowing my previous work experience I knew what toxic looked like. I work in an operating room at a different facility, I worked my way from the ground up and had not heard one complaint. I am a rockstar here. my point? I want to make so many. my point is that some nurses are toxic people, especially those at sparkling facilities. it does not make them any better than those that have worked community hospitals. travelers are the most kind nurses you will run into. they are the most kind souls and they want to help unlike those that are corrupted. unions serve a vital purpose but often to the point that they are communistic and that one must conform. I love the operating room. some have tried to take it away from me but they have failed. Some days are difficult some, some nights I wake up in turmoil over things that no longer matter and are just "there" to take advantage of a person willing to learn your field of interest and to squander that opportunity is the equivalent of devouring innocence and fosters survivalist mentality that is toxic to the following generation. please break the cycle.