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 nursing, and when an opportunity arose I jumped at the chance. I have absolutely no regrets... I love my job! (most days!!!) I have been there 3.5 years now. Before that I worked on a GI/Gen Surg floor... I could do the job but I didn't love it. I am so glad I left and went to the OR.

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 open postings they were accepted into. Are there part time positions available in your unit? If there are, it might be easier to convince your manager to let you go part time. Really, you'd think it would be better to have someone go part time than to leave completely...

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. We do cystoscopy, carpal tunnel, trigger finger release, many little "lumps and bumps" removals (lipomas, potential skin cancers, moles, etc), some smaller ENT things (occ. myringotomy, polyp remvoal, etc).

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!! Once the circuit is hooked up, the machine takes care of the gasses (as explained above) I am often tired after work, especially after working a 10h shift, or an evening shift. It's an exhausting job, especially when you first start! Your body should get used to it eventually! Just make sure you are getting a good night's sleep. :)

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 will take call for nights. So if you would need to stay or get called back, it would be 16h working. But then some people do doubles when we're short and that's definitely 16h.

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't want us to do either...)

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 greenlight lasers. I can't imagine any of them leaving a laser unattended. It wouldn't be allowed! That rep must not value his job at all.

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 mine. I thought I might have trouble with my ankles (I am a chronic ankle-sprainer) but after the first week I didn't have problems anymore... plus my feet stopped aching at the end of every day. They're not for everyone, but I think they're worth a try!!

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 provide nurses for both teams. Good for you for trying to change it. Too often we nurse just suck it up and deal with it... and complain to each other!!

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, and it's taking a bit of getting used to.... but I think over all it's good.

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's happening at your hospital. That's scary that they disappear!!

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 get on a transplant team is to get OR experience. So go for it!!

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 then look at going to the OR, but an opportunity came up sooner so I jumped! I've been in the OR for 2.5 years now and I love it :) Working in the OR, you will lose some of your "floor" skills, but you will also improve upon others, and gain LOTS of different skills. For me, working on the floor was an experience I wanted. It helped me feel more confident and grounded in my abilities. But there are some girls I work with who came straight to the OR and are excellent OR nurses as well. The operating room is such a different world from any other sort of nursing, and so to go there first without any other experience is great if you know that's what you want to do. But if you have any doubts, some work on the floor might help you in case you go to the OR but then decide it's not for you. Then you have some other nursing experience as well. That said, most people who come to the OR and stick it out through orientation never leave.

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 where they can go home same day. I do enjoy doing the peds cases- it's sometimes a nice change! But in terms of the sorts of stress that occur in the OR- I'm not sure there's too much of a difference. If you enjoy working with kids, and think you would be able to work well in high-intensity emergency situations (on occasion), then go for it! But you will get difficult surgeons in both adults and peds. And you learn to deal with them, whether you're soft-spoken or not. In fact- sometimes that helps you. We have one surgeon who is generally miserable to work with, and her favourite scrub nurse is one who is very soft-spoken... :) So it doesn't so much have to do with whether you're soft spoken or not... just whatever fits you best!

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 MRSA/VRE/etc cases, we usually have someone in the core who can get stuff for us, so that as a circulator you can stay in the room and don't have to constantly re-gown and re-glove. When I'm circing I usually put on 2 pairs of gloves, then I can just change the outer pair if they get contaminated, but I can wear the other pair for the case.

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. The small dose given in the epidural or spinal does a lot more than much larger doses of narcotics given through the IV. But pain control is only one aspect of the anesthetic. And so the patient gets a general because the purpose of the epidural/spinal is not to provide complete anesthesia, just to complement it. For an abdominal or chest case, it's usually a thoracic epidural/spinal, which numbs the mid-section rather than the lower half of the body. Hope that helps in your understanding!

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 build-up in scopes.

sterile water. not sure what they use in endo.