AORN of Anchorage--Partners in Car...

AORN of Anchorage--Partners in Care, 50 Years of Magic

In Anchorage, we are at a time when a perioperative nursing elective in the university's bachelor of nursing program is, at best, single in kind semester every other year. To make secure that even this happens, each effort is made to exalt its existence and enhance its benefits.

As perioperative give suck tos of the AORN of Anchorage chapter, we have wholeheartedly supported the inclusion of a perioperative nursing elective at the university. We have many reasons for doing this. Ultimately, the quality of patient care hangs on the availability of interested and qualified perioperative feeds If a perioperative elective is not presented there is little chance to lay open nursing students to the OR. Consequently not many if any graduating nurses in this city gravitate towards this specialty.

If we can't hold fast students interested in perioperative nursing, are we going to be a dying breed? Sadly, we all know that the average age of the OR nourish is getting "older." We are stable this scenario is not exclusive to Alaska, although to be ascribed to our location and lower population numbers, it certainly creates a unique situation. What are the options for obtaining of recent origin recruits to fill our OR nurture vacancies here in Anchorage? We can hire locally, we can hire from outside the state, and we can provide perioperative training programs for feeds within our local facilities. Hiring from the "Lower 48" can be time consuming as well as rich One source in Anchorage reports that it takes an average of 10 month to fill individual OR nurse position at her facility.

To hire locally, we must either have qualified applicants or "interested" applicants; thus, perioperative training programs have emerg within our facilities. A not many such programs exist in Anchorage already, and a not many more facilities are beginning to bring out their own programs because of the inability to recruit qualified applicants.

The bottom line is that there must be "interest" in OR nursing as well as prospect to this specialty. It becomes imperative to stir up a perioperative nursing elective at the university to make secure that this happens. Call it nurturing and caring for our acknowledge call it survival, call it creating the nearest generation of OR nurses--we made a choice to become involved and we have build that it does make a difference!

Last August, AORN of Anchorage board member, Jackie Roeder RN BSN addressed University of Alaska, Anchorage, nursing scholars who were taking the perioperative elective. She talked about AORN in general and specifically about our local chapter. She promot membership and its benefits to scholars and also invited them to our chapter meeting during OR foment Week. Five students from this class joined us forward Nov 12, 1998. They shared their didactic and perioperative clinical experiences with us, and we shared information about AORN with them. We talked about our national organization, our local chapter, committee activities, Congres OR specialties, and career options in perioperative nursing. It became evident that evening to what extent excited they were about perioperative nursing and to what extent important they felt it was to hold fast this elective alive in their nursing curriculum. They felt that it should be giveed more frequently and that members of our chapter could make this possible on working with the faculty at the university and by means of increasing our support of the program.

generally the students must complete 40 hours of clinical experience as well as the didactic portion of the elective. AORN member Gail Augdahl, RN BSN CNOR, acts as adjunct faculty member for the clinical portion. Kathleen Melican, RN MSN FNP teaches the didactic constituting Nurse preceptors at each facility work with the pupils to complete their clinical requirements. most numerous preceptors are AORN members eager to involve the scholar nurses in a variety of clinical experiences above and beyond their basic requirements for the course. The bookish mans have been well accepted in all facilities quite through the area that offer OR services. These facilities include Providence Alaska Medical Center Alaska Regional Hospital, Alaska Native Medical Center Alaska Surgery Center Geneva thickets Surgical Center, Veterans Administration Outpatient Clinic, Valley Hospital in Palmer, and the USAF 3rd Medical assign places to at Elmendorf Air Force Base.

Successe of our support? We are solitary in the beginning stages, which leaves us a parcel of room for growth and continued involvement. Unanimously, the observers thought that this perioperative rotation was the "best" clinical rotation they had experienced. Last year, from a small class of 14 undivided has joined AORN as a scholar nurse. And in the piece of work market? We have yet to behold how many will pursue the OR as their choice of trade after they graduate from their nursing program.

To continue to provide the "best," AORN of Anchorage will continue to support the perioperative nursing program with its preceptors and invitations to the bookish mans to attend monthly meetings. Our goal is to become more involved with the faculty and the nursing close examiners at the university to provide more in all senses to a career in perioperative nursing. Our involvement makes a difference!