Life Of An OR Nurse

You go to nursing school, you specialize with taking prerequisites, and  go through a difficult interview and your finally feeling lucky to be placed in the OR. It's the most challenging yet rewarding experience one can go through, and yes some of the memes of being a nurse is true but life in the OR comes with its own difference. A lot of your training will help but a good majority of this profession also runs on instincts.  

Your day to day varies based on the cases you're assigned. You start out the day with the patients your assigned, completing paperwork and making sure everything is in order. Once floor work is complete you bring the patient to OR room, you help position the patient, work with anesthesia then you start prepping for the procedure.

• You do paperwork, monitor the entire sterile field and make sure it is not compromised, before the procedure. Make sure all equipment is set up and running appropriately, run to get anything that anyone on the team needs beforehand. 
• You learn to become become methodical, as an OR nurse you will be setting up instruments before the surgery and passing it to the surgeon. This helps you because upon closing you are responsible to count all the sponges and instruments to make sure nothing is left in the body .
• You learn to anticipate what the surgeon needs before they ask. 
• You never really know what your coworkers look like because your used to seeing them in sterile clothing, hair covers and masks and gloves.
• You appreciate the ability of human bodies because you get accustomed to sight of blood, body odors, internal body organs including being naked.
• You learn to develop a thick skin and not take things personally because you are around some really headstrong, insecure, impulsive and interesting personalities.
• You learn to really rely on a team to keep the ship from sinking and get things to go smoothly.
• You develop OCD around having a sterile field and become a clean freak.
• You learn to control your bladder for hours and forget what hunger felt like. You become a master at it after a few long surgeries when you miss your lunch breaks.
• There are easy and hard days with high intensity depending on the procedure, for example moving patients, working with heavy instruments, holding forceps or camera still for long periods of time for the surgeon.
• After the surgery, once closing count is done, you help with cleaning and dressing and transporting the patient to PACU(Post anesthesia care unit). You help set up the monitors and you officially hand off the the patient care. You also have responsibilities of labeling and sending off specimens collected during surgery to pathology. 
• And finally, you make sure the room gets turned over pretty quickly before you start out another case. 

The field teaches to become organize, because the more prepared you are the better you can handle anything that comes your way. The moments in surgery can go as routine or in a split second complication can arise and there is dead silence, these are moments to watch closely so in the future you can stay one step ahead

If you enjoy fast paced environment, high adrenaline rush and have no physical limitations, you'll love being part of an OR team. The actual job itself is rewarding, you'll get to see the difference you made.