hapaboy

I came to the OR approximately 20 years ago and my background was ICU and Psych Nursing. Teamwork and communication are very important in the OR and I found that my psych background came in very useful in communicating with surgeons (especially the difficult ones) and other team members. You will acquire a completely different set of nursing skills, so all new nurses are on a level playing field when they come to the OR. Just make sure that you choose an OR with a good training program. I was in orientation for 4 months 20 years ago. Orientation is now 7 months for new nurses in the same OR and we provide training in both the scrubbing and circulating roles. We utilize Periop 101 from AORN and that is a great tool for learning those basic OR skills. My suggestion is that if you are serious about becoming an OR nurse, get involved in your local chapter of AORN and start networking with other OR nurses, educators and managers in your area.

Men in nursing have come such a long way since I began 34 years ago. On my first RN job in ICU, my locker was in the basement of the hospital with the housekeepers and my time clock was in the female locker room. I had to make sure that there were no females in the room before I could time in.