It’s been six and a half months since I started my first professional nursing job in the OR, and I’m finally about to finish my long orientation period. I have one more week to go and then I won’t be a nurse intern any longer, but a regular staff nurse. I was bummed this week because I got a cold and had to call out sick on my last regular day of the internship, but it’s nice to actually be able to do that now since a few months ago I wasn’t allowed to use any of my PTO at all.
I had a “wow” moment this week. At first everything in the OR was exciting and every surgery I saw was interesting and amazing to me, but after awhile you start to see the same thing over and over, and between the different surgical services you start to see similarities and things aren’t quite as exhilarating anymore. Still interesting, but no longer a novelty. This week I got to scrub in on my first thoracic surgery though – a lung lobectomy. It was incredible the way the doctor assessed his location among the ribs and how he accessed the lung. It was eye opening to see the black spots and damage caused by the patient’s years of smoking. I love seeing and learning about new surgical procedures.
I’ve come to realize that there are some pros and cons of working in a Level 2 trauma center versus a Level 1 hospital. For example, a pro is definitely scheduling – because we are smaller and have big neighboring Level 1 hospitals, we don’t have to be as heavily staffed on nights, weekends, and holidays, meaning that I get more of those times off without having to request them. A con that our hospital doesn’t do cardiac surgery or transplants, and thoracic surgery is very few and far between.
It has also been interesting to sense how my role among my coworkers is changing as I near the end of my internship. My more experienced coworkers have started to realize that I’m almost done with orientation and are treating me more like equals. The newer interns seem to look up to me and I find myself looking out for them too, as some of our scrub techs (one in particular) seem to be against them. My nurse educator and I have begun communicating on a more personal level at times, while at the same time she treats me as a equal professionally. This in particular means a lot to me because I am young and fresh out of school still, so to be recognized and treated as a bonafide professional is very appreciated since I see myself in that light.
I will miss Esther after this transition…she’s been with me on every step of this journey and has become quite a friend and confidante at work. Now our schedules will be different and we won’t have the same time together as before. As interns, we had lots of meetings and conferences that we attended together, whereas now we won’t have those as much anymore. There will still be Thursday morning staff meetings and perhaps we’ll go to some Dysrhymthmia or ACLS courses together, but I will miss seeing Esther and the other interns regularly at our 2:00pm meetings with Belinda.
We had an undergraduate student in our room on Wednesday, and I found that I really enjoyed being the one who got to explain everything to her. When you come into the OR for the first time, I know it can be so disorienting. There are so many machines and people that it’s hard to know what all of them are there for. And to be the one who was knowledgeable for once! What a nice feeling.
Now that I will be on my own without a preceptor by my side, I will be responsible for everything. There is always a safety net in that you can call the front desk and the charge nurse can rush in and help if things get bad in your room, but hopefully I won’t need to do that. I feel ready to try this on my own. It will be strange though, because for the past 6 months I’ve been oriented to the day shift 7am-3:30pm Monday through Friday, but now my schedule is changing. I will be working three 12 hour shifts a week, from 9am to 9:30pm. This has some great benefits in my opinion. Those are great hours for a 12 hour shift, and I would naturally be awake during those hours anyway (versus 7am, which is too early and not natural for me). It will give me more days off per week, meaning more 3 and 4 day weekends to spend at home with my family & friends. Coming in at 9am is considered an off-shift, and in our OR the off-shift employees always get first or second dibs on signing up for the upcoming schedule, whereas regular-shift staff get to sign up on a rotating basis after the ortho & off-shift teams. It could be difficult at first though, because I will be coming in to cover people’s 15-minute morning breaks and then their 30 or 45-minute lunch breaks (depending on the day). This will mean I’m not in one room or even in one role (scrubbing or circulating) continuously throughout the day but instead jumping between many different surgeries. That could be good, getting to see lots of different things…or it could just feel chaotic and crazy. But at least if I’m covering a room and things get bad, I’m kind of guarunteed to be out of there in 45 minutes or less, haha!
