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The Perioperative process through the eyes of a Nursing Student Ashley Christensen Our Lady of the Lake College

Running head: THE PERIOPERATIVE PROCESS 2 The Perioperative process through the eyes of a Nursing Student The four fundamental responsibilities of a nurse are to promote health, to prevent illness, to restore health, and to alleviate suffering. The responsibilities of a Perioperative nurse are no different; however, they are spread out among the three phases of ones Perioperative experience: preoperative, intraoperative, and postoperative. During the preoperative phase, the nurses primary role is to ease the patients fears and anxiety as best as possible, as well as provide patient teaching. According to Brunner (2010), Each patient is taught as an individual, with consideration for any unique concerns or learning needs (p. 434). This makes the role of the nurse quite diverse and possibly difficult at times. The role of the nurse soon switches gears during the intraoperative phase, where their primary role is now to protect the patients safety and health by monitoring the activities of the surgical team and continually assessing the patient for signs of injury and implementing appropriate interventions (Brunner, 2010, p. 444). During the last phase, postoperative, the nurses primary role switches gears once again and becomes primarily providing patient care until the patient has recovered from the effects of the anesthesia. Surgery, whether elective or emergent, is a stressful, complex event (Brunner, 2010, p. 425) in which many complications can occur. The role of a nurse throughout the process from start to finish is certainly not a tedious position. Surgical Asepsis Surgical asepsis is defined as the absence of microorganisms in the surgical environment to reduce the risk for infection (Brunner, 2010, p. 442). There are specific guidelines in which the surgical team follows in order to maintain surgical asepsis in the operating room; some for example include: all materials in the sterile field must be sterile, gowns are considered sterile from the chest to the level of the sterile field, movement around a sterile field must not contaminate the sterile field, and also if a sterile barrier is questionable as to whether or not it is

Running head: THE PERIOPERATIVE PROCESS 3 still sterile, it is considered contaminated regardless. The surgical team use certain techniques in order to maintain sterilely in the operating room for example an unsterile nurse may open a package of forceps in such a way that one does not touch the sterilized inner packaging so that a sterile nurse can grab the sterile instrument without breaking sterile field. Another example is the way the team members move about the operating room ensuring that one does not turn its back on another team members front side exposing their sterile field to the unsterile side of ones gown. If two team members must turn their back, both team members will do so enabling unsterile to come in contact with only unsterile. To observe these team members doing such is fascinating; they move about without any effort as if doing so is second nature. Anesthesia Complications Although team members tend to move around the operating room in such a debonair manner, complications can arise from not only sterility but also the anesthetic agent that they use to place the patient unconscious. During any surgical procedure, the patient needs to be sedated to a point that allows the surgeon and surgical team to perform the procedure without injuring the patient or risking any harm to the patient. For the patient, the anesthesia experience consists of having an IV line inserted and then receiving a combination of anesthetic agents (Brunner, 2010, p. 448). Typically the experience is a smooth one, and the patient has no recall of the event however the patient is subject to several complications such as: anaphylaxis and malignant hyperthermia. An anaphylaxis reaction is essentially an acute allergic reaction that occurs in response to any anesthetic agent used and can potentially be life threatening for the patient.

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References Anderson, Charles & Johnson (2003). The impressive psychology paper. Chicago: Lucerne Publishing. Smith, M. (2001). Writing a successful paper. The Trey Research Monthly, 53, 149-150. Entries are organized alphabetically by surnames of first authors and are formatted with a hanging indent. Most reference entries have three components: 1. Authors: Authors are listed in the same order as specified in the source, using surnames and initials. Commas separate all authors. When there are seven or more authors, list the first six and then use et al. for remaining authors. If no author is identified, the title of the document begins the reference. 2. Year of Publication: In parenthesis following authors, with a period following the closing parenthesis. If no publication date is identified, use n.d. in parenthesis following the authors.

Running head: THE PERIOPERATIVE PROCESS 5 3. Source Reference: Includes title, journal, volume, pages (for journal article) or title, city of publication, publisher (for book).

Running head: THE PERIOPERATIVE PROCESS 6 Appendix Each Appendix appears on its own page.

Running head: THE PERIOPERATIVE PROCESS 7 Footnotes

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