MJN2007

Can anyone tell me about their experience as a Travel Nurse in the operating room? I currently work in a pediatric hospital and have been an OR nurse for nearly two years. I'm thinking about traveling, and would love to hear some stories. Also, what's the best advice to prepare for travel nursing?

I work in a children's hospital. We save the "crani" hair often because it's baby's first hair cut, or in the event that the child might not survive the surgery =/

I have not worked on a med-surg floor since nursing school. Therefore, I can't really compare the two. But, I've been in the OR for almost two years and LOVE it. It does get stressfull, but it is a different stress from what you might encounter on "the floors". You may find that people who work in the OR have similar "strong" personalities and a somewhat warped sense of humor. This isn't a bad thing though! You don't know how well you may or may not fit until you get there. If you shy away from dealing with patients and families, you can't avoid it in an OR. An OR nurse has to deal with very anxious patients/families and must develop a trusting relationship with them in a small amount of time. At my hospital, calling out to the family with updates during surgery is the OR nurses responsibility. Also, remember that the OR nurse is the #1 patient advocate which requires you to have to stand up for your pt. This means you can't be afraid to challege the doc's you are working with. (when you develop great working relationships with them though, I often find that they respect what I have to say) My advice is to go and shadow in the OR. See if it even feels right for you to be there. I knew from the second I stepped into the OR that it was "home." And if you love it but meet some challenges due to the learning curve, the best advice I can offer is to stick with it for at least a year. It's impossible to become a functioning OR nurse overnight. Good luck!

I work in a Connecticut hospital. We are staffed up until 11pm. We have "lates" and "call." Call starts at the end of your shift and continues overnight until 7am. So for me, I am on from 3:30pm to 7am the next morning. We get $6.50/hr to hold the beeper and time and a half when we actually get called in. We also have "lates" that last from 3:30-5:30pm. So if alot of rooms run later than 3:30 and we need extra staff members to stay, the person scheduled for a "late" is the first to stay, the person on "call" is the second to stay (if needed), and if we were super busy, that's when staff members not on late or call are asked to stay as well. If you were asked to stay, the hospital will pay you as if you were on call, i.e. time and a half for the time worked. Very fair, and works well for us!

JamieRN2007.. I am also a new grad and started in the OR this summer. The same things you are experiencing, I am experiencing..right down to the "you will lose your skills" or "managers are horrible and everyone is quitting" remarks. I can relate, but I am also very new and uber enthusiastic about the OR. Still, there are always those people who love to scare you, or gossip, or have just become disgruntled and need to rough up the newbies. As far as I'm concerned, I love my job and won't let my "loss of skills or lack of good management" scare me until I am personally affected by it. Also, about the 2 year floor nurse rule? There are way too many options in nursing to work in an area that you do not like. Personally, I never really liked floor nursing and if you think about it, in alot of hospitals floor nursing has become a "specialty" in of itself. For example, you could get experience on a GI floor for two years, but how much will that help you later on if you go work on a cardiac or ortho floor. That is at least my reasoning. I am working with two other nurses who are new to the OR. One with three years experience in the ED and the other with 10 years experience in Medsurg. We experience the same struggles as new OR nurses, it doesn't appear that their experience has helped them greatly in this particular specialty. It's just too different! The term they best used to describe it is feeling like a fish out of water. Soooo to make a long story short, I can completely agree with you. I would love to hear from other nurses who "done their time" on the floor before going into the OR.