sarcasmo

Excellent post IsseyM. I am an OR circulator, and that is an excellent summary of what I do day in and day out. Something else I want to add is that we do a lot of patient education, especially during our pre-op interview. We make sure the patient understands what is going to happen to them while they are in the OR, what to expect when they wake up, and to some degree, what to expect during their recovery period. We have a very limited few minutes to establish a repoire with these people who are turning themselves over to us, and we must make sure they have faith that we are going to take care of them in the very special environment of the OR. The majority of patients are asleep, with no conscious thoughts or movements....they depend on the OR team for breath, warmth, safety, dignity, etc. In the hospital where I work, the OR prides itself on looking at the patient's family as part of our responsibility as well. We keep family members up to date on surgical progress with hourly phone calls (depending on the case) and reassurances that things are going well and their family member is safe and well cared for. So we do a lot of technical work, but we do a lot of emotional and mental work too. It is very rewarding as I am sure you are discovering! It's fun to see a "new" OR nurse excited about her job!

Congratulations on passing boards! Way to go! Here are my thoughts on this: I have been an OR nurse for 3 1/2 years, and I cannot imagine doing anything else. I really enjoyed the short (1 day) clinical rotation I got in nursing school, but always assumed that you couldn't start out in OR. By the end of nursing school, and in my very first nursing job, I was seriously questioning my desire to be a nurse...I simply wasn't happy being a "floor nurse". As luck would have it, I was offered a job in a small OR and I took it, thinking I couldn't possibly any unhappier than I already was. It only took about 2 weeks for me to realize I was born to do OR nursing. With a very few exceptions, all of the OR nurses I have ever worked with have done very little BUT OR nursing, and I work with some of the best. I have since branched out into pre-op, Same Day Outpatient, and Recovery, and like those areas as well, but I will never quit OR. So my belief is that if you like it and are good at it, that will happen regardless of what other experience you might have. I do believe that many of the skills that are required of CCU nurses (and probably other specialties) definitely fall by the wayside in the OR, so if CCU is your ultimate interest, OR full time might not be the way to go. Don't ever let anyone tell you that someone is "just an OR nurse"....we have a special set of skills and abilities that might not carry over into other areas, but are no less important to the quality care of surgical patients. In a nutshell, I firmly believe that life is too short to NOT love what you do.....find your niche and run with it, whatever that might be. Good luck!

Hi there, I just got one of these in the mail today, and was looking for some info on it. I googled it several different ways because it just didn't seem right to me. The only information I was able to find was here....you all seemed to have the same suspicions I did, so I have shredded it. In the process of googling....i discovered many different sites that offer scholarship information for no charge. Hmmmmm..... anyway, thanks for confirming my suspicions...good minds think alike, right?