maeyken

One way to get a feel for the environment would be to see if you can shadow an OR nurse for a day- just to see what all goes into the job. For me, just observing a few cases during nursing school was enough for me to be really interested in OR nursi...

In the OR I work in, people who come new to the OR have to complete their orientation period and I think about 3mos full time, and then can go part time (that's about 6mos full time). We have been really short of part time staff though, so those were...

We have a minor procedure area where we do small cases under local only. (no anesthetist, only one nurse and the surgeon). There is no option for sedation here, so if a surgeon thinks their patient can't handle it, they have to book it in the main OR...

ANY outside cases go through ER whether they come from another hospital, a doctor's office, clinic, etc. If we're not ready for them, and they have a bed, then they go to the floor to wait for us. :)

the only reason i can think of to stay at your hospital would be for seniority, but if you are just starting as an RN I don't know if you would retain any of that seniority. if you don't, there's no reason to stay.

The only time I've been affected by gas in the OR is when we're inducing kids by mask. As they go through the excitation phase they wiggle a lot and sometimes we get more of the gas than they do! haha not really but it seems that way sometimes!! Onc...

Wow, I didn't realize how lucky we are where I work. We're staffed 24/7, (for weekends/holidays- 3 on days, evenings, 2 on nights) The only call we do is one person from day shift will take call for evening shift, and one person from evening shift wi...

We too have 10h shifts, but we are staffed 24/7. We have a choice of whether to bank the time, or take the money. We do a fair amount of OT, but it is counted as such. Doesn't make management happy, but it's that or cancel more cases (which they don'...

All our fibers are disposable. I think we have a couple old re-usable (sterilized!!) ones kicking around. But NEVER unsterile! And as for leaving the laser unattended?!?! Huge NO NO! We have RNs trained in lasers, and have our own holmium, CO2, and g...

We used Alexander's in my course... and the standards binder of course!!

I am a Dansko convert as well. Just got my first pair about 4 months ago, and absolutely love them! What I found though, is that each pair fits differently, so try on several in your size if possible. I tried on 5 different pairs before settling on m...

Nope! :) Working for 2 teams, like you said, causes your attention to be split between the two teams, who are doing different things. It's not like you've got 2 surgeons working on the same hole... it's 2 separate surgeries. I think they should provi...

We only have 8's and 10's, but we all rotate through them.

In our facility, we don't do hearts, but in terms of opening items, the only items we DON'T hand to the scrub nurse are drapes, towels, gowns, and things like that. Everything else is handed directly to the scrub. This is a fairly new policy for us, ...

Our surgeons do one part at a time, so it's the same scrub nurse for the whole thing.

When I was starting in the OR I watched a lot of videos there! They were helpful in learning the general order of procedures. Haven't looked at it in awhile though... I see enough every day!! lol :)

I work in a teaching hospital, and so sometimes our anesthesia docs will leave a senior resident with the patient... but usually they let us know where they're going, and are always available to come back right away. But that doesn't sound like what'...

I second what BlueEyedNursey said. You need OR experience to be on the transplant team. At our hospital, we only do kidney transplants, so we don't have a transplant team of any sort since most people can scrub those. But the only way you're going to...

I think it really depends on what you think you will gain from either option. I worked on the floor for a little over a year, and then got an amazing opportunity to go to the OR. My plan out of school was to work on the floor for maybe 5 years and t...

Hang in there!! The retarded stage will pass

We do a small number of peds cases in our mainly adult OR, mostly T&A's, ears (tubes, pinnings), and dental, occasionally a circ or hydrocele/hernia. Our youngest patients are 2 years old. We don't do any sort of big peds cases ever- only ones wh...

Our hospital treats it pretty black and white... either they are +ve or -ve. Patients who are +ve get all contact precautions for the entire case, PAR, etc. -ve patients are treated like any other patient (just standard universal precautions). For MR...

Anesthetics can be given a variety of ways. By doing an epidural or spinal as well as a general, the anesthetist doesn't have to give as much medication for pain control during the case, and the patient will also have better pain control afterwards. ...

Many of our colonoscopies in the OR are done for laparoscopic bowel resections... and so the water could technically leak into the abdomen if the anastamosis site is not sealed. Also, like someone else mentioned, sterile water is distilled, so no bu...

sterile water. not sure what they use in endo.