lenawa

I agree, the wider the experience, the better. I started doing tele-triage nursing 4 months ago and, wow, what a learning curve. I had 2 years of med-surg, then 3 years in the O.R. before taking this job and I was totally overwhelmed. I had never worked in pediatrics, the last time I saw chicken pox is when I had it 20 years ago and I have no OB background to help me when I'm asked 'is this real labour or just braxton hicks?'. The computer program is there to guide you. However, if decisions were only up to the computer, they could have and trained monkey doing this job. Nursing judgement is vital. As far as the work from home aspect, my company offers this but prefer 1 year experience with them first. This may seem unnecessary, but they do expect you to be fairly independent and after 4 months working full time, I am still at the charge nurse's desk 2-3 times/shift asking for guidance. Hope this helps L

I am on the cardiac service for our OR. our staff is not technically cross trained, but we are frequently floated to other services to replace sick calls. every evening there are 2 staff that work from 11-7 PLUS 1 on call for General/ Plastics/ Vascular, 1 on call for ortho, 2 on call for neuro and 3 on call for cardiac. the policy at our hospital is there has to be 2 cardiac nurses to open a chest (tamponade etc...) and 3 if it is a pump case. we are paid the same on call pay as everyone else ($12 for every 8 hour unit we are on call plus minimum 4 hours at straight pay for call back, if we are there more than 4 hours, we get double time for the whole amount of time we are there), but tend to be on call more often and called in more often when we are on call. We used to staff the cardiac OR's until 1900h, but our manager recently added a 3-11 shift that 2 people work every day. although it sucks to have to work yet another shift, it is nice to actually get to go home at 7 instead of staying late because the case runs over (they usually seem to) anyway, i am babbling LEna

I work in a trauma centre. M-F we have 9 RN's/ ORT's (usually only 1 or 2 ORT's) working from 3-11 then 2 RN' s or 1 RN and 1 tech on from 11-7 PLUS 1 on call for Gen/plastics/vasc, 1 on call for ortho, 2 on call for neuro and 3 on call for cardiac. Seems a little excessive doesn't it? sad to say it isn't Lena

I recently took an O.R course and any textbooks or websites that i saw with names of instrumentation didn't help me that much. i found it much better just to practice with a partner asking for things and giving it to them, or by taking a few minutes by myself and coming up with memory tricks for them. before i knew it i knew the names and had forgotten the tricks. the important thing is just to get your hands on them. also, i found that many of the surgeons don't use the textbook names and names vary from OR to OR good luck! Lena