CraigTurner R.N.

In Texas you can't. I had to quit my tech job after passing NCLEX and went without a job for a week until my R.N. job started.

I just graduated May 2010. I interviewed and got the O.R. internship position in a hospital in North Dallas. I worked it for 2 months and immediately knew it wasn't for me. All those rumors about O.R. nurses not REALLY being nurses felt true for me. I didn't think I would miss the patient interaction or loss of many skills but it quickly dawned on me I was missing them. Most nursing school programs don't allow but one or two days in the O.R. which is not adequate to gain insight into the happenings in the surgical suite. We all worked our butts off for the skills we learned in nursing school and I hated to think that was all going to waste. Our circulating nurses aren't even allowed to draw blood, we have to call pathology down to draw blood when you have a perfectly licensed and skilled nurse standing right there to do it. It's a waste of resource. O.R. just has a very narrow pathway for development and advancement. If RNFA is what you KNOW you want to do than you are on the right track and I encourage it. But you are in a spot in your education that you can find out what it's really like before you commit to it. I say do everything you can to shadow a circulating nurse, or maybe sweet talk an instructor into substituting one of your Med/Surg days for an extra day in the O.R. It is a whole other world that needs exploring before diving in, but that's my opinion based on what I went through. I now work in the CDU (clinical decision unit) to advance my skills and give myself more options for advancement in the future. This is not to discourage you from going into O.R. many people fall in love with it, I loved the family like atmosphere and fun of the O.R. but I don't think it's the best place for a new grad who has no experience except what they learned in nursing school. But I'm but one experience and one person, go and researched and explore it, then make your decision. Good Luck with the rest of school.

If you live in Texas review 301.258 part C subsection 2 of the Nurse Practice Act. If you fail NCLEX the Texas BON immediately revokes your GN license. So if you get on the BON website and try to verify your GN license and it doesn't appear or if you check RN verification and it doesn't appear then you failed.This has been proven to work with people I know have failed. Works faster and more reliable than Pearson Vue trick. I found out I was an RN before my quick results were ready. Never paid the quick results fee. Anyways read that part of Nurse Practice Act.