Upcoming OR interview, suggestions?

Hi and welcome to AllNurses!

Here's a link to some questions I posted before...

https://allnurses.com/forums/f39/questions-manager-284367.html#post2682544

thanks for the info and helpful questions:rcgtku:, i have put a lot of thought into making the OR my career choice, and am keeping my fingers crossed that everything lines up. waiting interview tomorrow afternoon

You're welcome, and good luck!!!

Hi,

I started in the OR right out of school and just got out of the 6 month internship in December...

I love my job and where I work, but previous post had allot of great questions I wish I had seen before I went to my interview...

In case you are wondering about some of the questions they may ask you, here are some things that they asked me (i know every place will ask different things, but you never know)

They gave me scenarios and asked (to the best of my knowledge) how I would handle them. Most of the questions were Dr. and Nurse interaction questions like, "Dr. So and So is at a critical point of the procedure and is ranting and raving about something....how do you handle this" or "How do you handle conflict with a co-worker".

They didn't do this with our class, but they did with the following group of potential interns - but they actually gave us an overview of the set up of our sterile cores and then they gave us something to find. They wanted to see how our thinking process worked.

Since we are a large university teaching facility, they asked what we thought about teaching (because we would inevitably have to do it) and asked us to verbally teach something to them...for example, I chose to teach/describe how to make a paper airplane.

Hope this helps...good luck and if (when) you get the job, I hope you love it as much as I do

thankyou for the ideas, it sounds like your interview was a bit different than the one that I had this morning. I really liked that they had your groups do that, what a great way to assess someone's ability to think on their feet. Mine went really well this morning and I am hopeful about the next step...now if I could only speed up the licensure process a bit (that is really the only thing standing in my way).

This may be a silly question, but how do I ease into cardiac OR nursing? Does a position/specialty exist? I would love to know because this is where I want to have my career go to eventually. Thanks to all the responses in advance. :)

Obviously, there will be those with better answers, but I have found that different hospitals specialize in different areas.

You'd need to find out if the hospital does cardiac surgeries, then find out if you can choose your specialty team, or if you would have to circulate in all surgeries.

In addition to what others have suggested, hospitals in certain states (where there are not enough trained OR nurses) would allow new RNs to join the cardiac team right away. However, in most big hospitals especially here in New England, they would not put you on the cardiac team until you have done the basic rotations for several years with a proven track record.

Surgeon and Nurse - conflict and how would you handle it?

Roles of circulating nurse, scrub nurse, float nurse?

Roles of Anesthesia, support workers (porters, cleaning staff)

What are your strenghts?

What are your weaknesses?

Why should we hire your?

What can you bring to the OR?

Have you ever been involved with an ethical delima and how did you handle it?

Be calm. Think before your speak. Do not rush your answers. Shake hands with those that interview you before you leave.

Good luck and let us know how it went.