VA Operating Room Nurse

[finallyRN7, BSN]

Are there any OR nurses who work for A VA hospital? If so, what is your work schedule like? How often are you on-call? Are you required to work weekends? Also, I understand that the OR is a cool environment to work. Can you tell me exactly what your interpretation of "cool" temperature in the OR would feel like? Below 65 degrees??

Thanks so much in advance for your answers! :-)

[lidleanjel]

OR call depends on the VA which you work at. Each VA hospital has a specific specialty, so it varies. Any OR is going to be a "cool environment" because this is one way that microorganisms are controlled (they typicially do not like to live in cool environments). For the most part, weekends the OR at the VA is not open, but that varies depending on location and specialty.

[finallyRN7, BSN]

Okay, so nursing in the OR is a specialty, so I'm not clear about what you mean when you say specialty. Do you mean that each VA's OR only perform specific types of surgeries? Would you please elaborate what you mean by specialty? Thanks.

[lidleanjel]

Any OR is considered at specialty, but what I am referring to as each VA hospital has a specialty .... For example Iowa city specialty is kidney transplants. Minneapolis is open heart surgeries. That does not mean those are the only type of surgeries that are completed but it is the main specialty at that location. Does this help?

[finallyRN7, BSN]

Yes that helps a great deal. Thanks for elaborating.