anonrn0369

Beards are fine as long as they are covered! We have a special head cover for OR staff with exceptional facial hair... It covers the head and ties under the chin and resembles a knight's headpiece. Side note- I know a doctor who required that his nurses wear full pantyhose under their uniforms (back when nurses wore skirts) to prevent contamination from "lady partsl fall-out" haha

I am an OR nurse and let me tell you, it is not for everyone. I have experience being a "real nurse" in ICU and Psych. The stresses endured by an OR nurse are very different from the stresses of an ICU nurse. For example, leaving a shift from ICU, a nurse might think to him or herself, "Is there something I could have done differently that would have prevented my patient from dying tonight?" A nurse leaving the OR after a shift might think, "Is there something I could have done differently that would have prevented that surgeon from calling me a ******* retard in front of the whole room because I had a blue sitting stool for him instead of his favorite green one?" I'm not complaining about my job. I'm grateful to go home without an aching back, without smelling like poo, and without the mental exhaustion of answering a patient's family's questions like, "If she's having a seizure in her brain, why is her arm twitching? The brain and the arm are in different places!" (Yeah, that happened.) That being said, the psychological pressures of working in the OR are INTENSE. You get zero satisfaction from direct patient care. You don't get to see people get better. You don't form bonds with patients. Since we don't form any relationship with the patient, we don't get together and quietly giggle about what cutely ridiculous question a patient asked when we were rounding, or what the heck a patient's crazy aunt was wearing when she came to visit. So, that leaves two choices for common topics of discussion: 1. Talk about the personal lives, actions, or rumors of our co-workers (particularly those that are not in the room). 2. Talk about the patient. Some OR staff members are jerks and say mean things all the time. Some OR staff members are nice and tell a pleasant story about what a patient said in the 30 seconds we are allotted to make small talk on the way to the operating room. The OR is an odd and dysfunctional family. There are many strong personalities enclosed in a tiny room with no windows for hours on end. I can understand how we look like turds to an outsider at times, but it's mostly a matter or boredom and insecurity on our part. Gossip and snarkiness are everywhere in nursing, but they are magnified in the OR because we don't have to be on our best behavior in front of patients who are interacting with us. A floor nurse might say "Bless your heart," where an OR nurse would say, "You're an idiot." Or, for example, a floor nurse might say that a someone is "NOT a small person," (like you did, remember?) where an OR nurse would say that someone is "fat." It's the same thing. I guess my point is: The OR is a weird environment with very strange dynamics. We deal with a completely different kind of stress than "real nurses" and it's taken me a long time to understand why we act the way we act. If you don't like it, don't work there. But don't judge us :)