Three Things You Should Know About OR Nurses

Three Things You Should Know About OR Nurses

This is the interview of a nurse :

 Hi I'm Rob MacIsaac. And I'm Stephanie, I'm a registered nurse working in the operating room a the General. And we're here today to talk about three things you should know about being an OR nurse. So the first thing you need to know Rob is that an OR nurse has a skill set that can be applied to any surgery within the operating room so we can transition from the general service to the plastic service to all of the other services and our skill set can be utilized in each different department. 

That must make very interesting work life. It makes for a very interesting work life. There's no monotony in OR nursing. So the next thing you need to know Rob is that an OR nurse manages all of the activities within the operating room so we can have a couple of different roles we can either be the circulating nurse or we can do the scrub nurse depending on what your assignment for that day has been. Can you talk about, I'm interested in the difference the different roles between the scrub nurse versus a circulating nurse. The scrub nurse role is what most people would typically associate with what they think an OR nurse does. So your scrubbed your gowned, your directly in the surgical field you're handing up surgical instruments. 

When you're the circulating nurse you manage everything beyond the surgical field so in that capacity you're doing things like providing equipment up to the sterile field that needs to be opened, assisting anesthesia, managing the counts, managing the chart, but you're also doing other things you're maintaining the flow of the operating room so there's a lot of different balls in the air at the same time it's the ultimate exercise in multitasking. So maybe you talk tell us about given the nature of the job what kind of person really thrives as an OR nurse? An or nurse has to be somebody who does well under pressure who is adaptable and thrives on constant change. So what, so what is it about the OR that that calls all that into play? I can safely say that the operating room is the safest place to be in the hospital there's always multiple highly trained skilled individuals in play. That being said so many things can happen.

You can be doing what anyone would consider to be just a basic generic case and that can change at the drop of a hat where all of a sudden things have gotten to be a lot more critical and require more serious intervention. In those situations you need to be prepared to act prepared to intervene and be okay functioning in those circumstances. I get it. So I really enjoyed meeting Stephanie today and getting shown through the OR and having a conversation with her about the role of the OR nurse. I think the three things you should know about OR nurses is first of all they start off as nurses and then train up to be OR nurses so it's a kind of specialization within the nursing field but for every you OR nurse they can end up doing so many different things so they don't specialize by procedure but they specialize by the fact that there are an OR nurse. So the second thing you should know but OR nurses is the fact that they really facilitate the operation of a smooth operating room. They're the ones that really facilitate everything going well making sure that the surgeons and everybody else in the room has everything that they need so it's a really critical role. The last thing is I think you know they need to expect the unexpected there's so many different things that can happen in an OR and it really goes to the role and the nature of the role of no our nurse that they need to be prepared to deal with urgent things as they occur so there's a lot of flexibility a lot of different different parts to the job I think it's a very rewarding job exciting fast-paced and I admired the the role that Stephanie is working on. It's amazing to me that we have a shortage of OR nurses because I do think it's a role that is super valuable within the hospital. So if you're thinking about becoming an OR nurse please let us know because we'd like to help you along that journey. Anyway that's it for today and I'll see you next time.