beanal

Believe it or not there are people on the internet who actually are educated and have credentials. If a nurse is honest and has valuable and credible information to share with the public what better way to do it than by writing an ebook. Researchers write in a way that no lay person could possibly understand. If nurses have the education, training, credentials and ability to write in a way lay people can understand then I believe they should. The public will never find valuable health care information written in a nursing journal. Why not share their many years of knowledge, education and experience with others? Nurses who write can and should include their bios, education and experience with each ebook. If you want to be an author and stick with legitimate publishers of professional nursing materials that is commendable as other nurses will learn from your publications. I believe that nurses who feel trapped in the nursing profession and want another avenue to make money should be given the opportunity to write and publish online. It can be a great way to not only supplement their income but increase it many, many times over. In hospital settings nurses affect the lives of their patients everyday. Publishing their valuable nursing knowledge in an ebook can have an affect on tens of thousands of patients in a very positive way for years. As far as I am concerned writing for the public in this way is respectable and I think more nurses should do it. As far as the cheating students go if students are dishonest there is no way anyone is going to prevent them from cheating. It's just not going to happen. These students will be dishonest in and out of nursing school and that is just a fact of life.

When you first start writing for hire you may only get $10 an article. But if you are writing about a health related topic that you are very familiar with you can write an article in about 15 minutes. If you look for IM forums on google then you can register with them and post in the "for hire" section. There are many other ways to make money with your nursing knowledge such as: *writing ebooks * becoming an affiliate marketer selling other peoples products. * having a paid health related membership site * write PLR (private label rights) articles for other membership sites * write an ebook, submit it to Kindle and get paid each time someone buys your book. * write a 50 page ebook submit it to a digital marketplace and have other affiliates sell your digital book. (If 1000 IM'rs sold your book you would receive 25K) (Create multiple digital products and have internet marketers sell your products and you will continue to be paid over and over for your writing.) * Read your ebook and create an MP3 of it and/or burn it to a CD. The physical copy can be sold on eBay. They no longer allow selling digital downloads of ebooks. There are many different ways to make money online but you have to be able to focus for long periods of time, have patience and a lightening fast internet connection. I hope this helps.

Re: electrical safety: Also do a visual inspection of the electrical cords of all OR equipment prior to use. Especially the OR table cord as sometimes the cord will be underneath the foot of the table and when the table is locked the cord is cut and frayed. Do not use the ESU as a prep stand as fluids can spill on the unit and cause a problem.

I think it is OK for a new grad to start in the OR as long as you have an good solid orientation with a nurse educator. I don't agree with new grads being shuffled around from nurse to nurse for the orientation process. It's confusing and potentially dangerous IMHO. Also find out if you will have to specialize in one service right after your orientation. Unless it is general surgery I don't think this is a good idea if you will be taking call. For example if you specialize in GU and are doing cystoscopies all day how are you going to acquire the skills to circulate for an emergency ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm while on call? It's something to find out before you are place in this situation.

Congratulations! If I had one piece of advice it would be to know your OR hospital policies and procedures very well. Also read AORN (American Operating Room Nursing) Standards. If you are going to be mentored by many different nurses throughout your nursing orientation you will need this information. Some nurses may give you inaccurate information especially if they have less than one year of nursing. (IMHO these nurses should not be orienting other nurses but it happens.) There are different ways to go about doing various tasks and both may be correct. There are also incorrect ways of implementing tasks as well. If you are not familiar with your hospitals P&P and the standards you will not be able to identify correct and incorrect OR nursing practices. There are some nurses who do not follow AORN recommended practices. I see nurses who prep incorrectly, count without visualizing the instruments, cruise the internet while circulating...I could go on and on. Your job in perioperative nursing is to be the patients eye, ears and voice while they are under general anesthesia (or any anesthesia for that matter.) Always treat your patients as if they are a member of your family and you will become an excellent perioperative nurse. After all each one of your patients is someones husband, wife, sister, brother, child or friend. You have made a wise decision to become an OR nurse. It is a tremendous responsibility and one that shouldn't be taken lightly. Best of luck with your new perioperative nursing career!

Students would not be able to sell these types of articles as they are only 400-600 words and are written for the lay person on health care related topics. I have written on various subjects such as diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure and migraines. These articles would not be suitable for a nursing school paper so students would not be interested in copying this type of content.

Anyone out there frustrated with their present nursing job? I was there a few years ago and then started writing health care related articles online for internet marketers. You can supplement your nursing income writing 400-600 word articles. There are internet marketers who own websites in all health related fields. They buy unique and original articles to post on their websites and blogs to increase the amount of traffic to their websites. They want articles on all types of health care topics ranging from heart disease, diabetes, lupus, cancer, obesity and virtually anything to do with the human body. If you like to write and want to share your knowledge then think about becoming an online article writer for hire.

As as a nurse you have options. For example if you know how to write you could write some articles for online marketers. There are literally hundreds of people who have health related websites who are looking for fresh and unique content to put on their websites. You could get paid for each article and then once you become known you could scale up your article writing and write for many internet marketers. They just love unique content! At first this will allow you to work part time and be at home with your kids more. Eventually you can retire from your J.O.B. and quit your day job and work when and where you choose. If you don't want to write for other people you could write your own health related ebook and sell it online. Many people look for informative health related information especially written by professional nurses. There are so many people making obscene amounts of money selling information products online.

I use to be a CRNFA before they had this official certification. It was so much fun and in my opinion is much better than being a PA as you just get to operate all day long. It was a blast and so exciting! One day you will be assisting with a craniotomy and the next day you will be assisting with a abdominal aortic aneurysm. There is nothing boring about this job as it is always changing.

It depends on the patient as to whether or not I check the balloon. Most patients I do check the ballon but I don't for patients with a hx of BPH as it is hard enough to try to get the foley inserted with an enlarged prostate. I don't want to take the chance of the balloon not returning to its original pre inflated state as this would make it even harder to insert. BTW our urologist never want the ballon to be tested.

I heard of a patient going blind in one eye when a first assistant was using a Deaver for abdominal surgery retraction. The assistants elbow was resting on the eye of the patient for an extended period of time and the patient was briused and subsequently went blind. I have never heard of coons eyes from a case in the supine position though.

Shadowing an experienced OR nurse for a day who loves to teach will be an invaluable experience and will allow you to better understand the perioperative role. If you are able to observe just be sure you are paired with a nurse who enjoys teaching as they are some periop. nurses who do not like to teach. These types of nurses can actually be detrimental to your intraoperative experience IMHO.

Our hospital has 16 OR's, 8 nurse managers and 7 coordinators not including the OR director, asst. director and VP. One of our nurse managers shared in the locker room that she has "never worked so little and gotten paid so much." This made the nurses who work their @$$e$ off in the OR everyday annoyed to put it lightly. Often times the NM's will be seen drinking coffee, chatting about their weekend and have actually been seen cruising the internet while "working." IMHO there are way too many chiefs in my facility and that puts a major burden on those of us who are left to do all the cases. How many OR's does your hospital have and how many nurse managers and coordinators are employed in your facility? Is your hospital top heavy in management? Do your managers ever come into the OR's and circulate or scrub cases? In this economy I am glad I am an indian and not a chief as I think I have more job security.

AORN has a great video on OR fires that was produced a few years ago. Just contact them and they will send you a copy. It very informative and very well done.

Our OR management and administrators pays lip service to having zero tolerance for verbal abuse from anyone not just surgeons. I think this year since one of the patient safety goals deals with verbal abuse that the university hospital will start to enforce their "zero tolerance" policy. After working in the OR for over 25 years I have no tolerance for any verabal or non verbal abuse. I decided from now on I will write an anonymous incident report that will go to risk management as well as the OR director. I am going to encourage my colleagues to do the same. Once they start receiving enough of these reports admin will need to start ramping up their zero tolerance campaign and stop pretending to care about verbal abuse.