SF Bay Area OR/Pay, experiences and advice?

[bayarea123]

Hello Nursing Fam,

I am hoping to get some questions answered about OR Nursing and future goals/plans. I would appreciate it ?

About me: I am currently a student at Duke finishing my BSN program and so far, I've loved the operating room when I did my rotations in Maternity. Even before that I was already researching this career path. Does anyone know if new grads are welcomed into the OR in the SF Bay Area? I ask because I hear that in certain specialties like the ICU, new grads are not typically hired into without a year or two of experience. Would this apply to the OR?

I am in my last 2 semesters of my BSN, and I will be in PeriOp1 3rd semester and PeriOp2 during 4th/last semester. My hope is to go back home to the SF Bay Area and work as an OR nurse.

Pay: How is the pay/hr like for OR nurses in the SF Bay Area? Do OR nurses take call a lot, and are there incentives for this? How does that work? I ask because one of the primary reasons I went into nursing was because of the flexibility and pay.

I am naturally a curious person and try to find out as much info as I can before starting something. I may be getting ahead of myself here with all these questions!

Thank you for reading and hope to hear from someone ?

[kkny1234]

I can’t speak for the OR specifically but I recently started as a travel nurse in the Bay Area and have worked with a lot of nurses who could not get a job as a new grad here. They had to go to either SoCal or out of state to find work as a new grad and then move back once they had experience. From what I’ve heard, there are so many experienced nurses looking for jobs here that they have no reason to hire and train new grads.