RN-J.

I work in a hospital in northern Ontario, Canada and we only ever have 2 nurses assigned to each OR room. It would be really nice to have a 3rd to be able to help with all the extra bits, however funding is constantly being cut to hospitals in Ontario so we are scheduled with the bare minimum to be able to run. 1 RN to circulate and either 1 RPN or RN to scrub. We do not utilize scrub techs (I'm not aware of anywhere in Canada that does). The circulating RN is responsible to assist the anesthetist for intubation and extubation, assist with patient positioning and then do all the rest of the running around throughout the case. We have RBA's (Room Based Attendants we call them) that clean the rooms and help turnover between cases. Then the scrub nurse is responsible for their setting up/tearing down etc. Hope that helps!

I was always taught to face instruments with the curve up for the same reasoning as described above. The sharp edges should never be facing down as they can very easily put holes in the drapes (even with a towel underneath them). It's really inconvenient (and unsafe for the patient) if you have to tear down your setup and re-drape/re-setup new instruments because a rake dragged a hole in your drapes.

Canada is not utilizing scrub techs (as far as I understand) in the majority of our operating rooms. I am unsure as to any that do use them in Ontario specifically. In the hospital I work at the RN's are trained equally in both scrubbing and circulating. The belief is that if you can scrub the procedures start to finish then you have a better understanding of it and what the team (and patient) needs during it. That isn't to say that circulating nurses that do not scrub don't understand the needs, that is just the theory behind our training. I actually really enjoy doing both roles as I like the variety in my workday. We have very few RPN's that work in our OR (only 2 out of 30+ nurses) and they are only allowed to do the scrub role.

I work in Ontario, Canada. When we're on call we're expected to be ready to go within 20 minutes of the phone call (15 minutes for C-sections). We are not provided any on-call rooms to sleep in or any other type of area to sleep besides on the couch in the staff lounge. A lot of the nurses live within the 20 minute radius. If they don't they tend to give their on-call shifts away or stay with family/friends/co-workers if that isn't possible.