Operating Room Nurse Resumes: Helping OR Nurses Build Rewarding Careers

While the responsibilities of all nursing professionals revolve around the assessment and treatment of patients, the duties of operating room nurses are most critical, as invasive procedures equate to greater risks for patients.  Operating Room (OR) nurses are ethically bound to provide the highest quality of care for all patients; simultaneously, they are obliged to reduce potentialities for liability impacting the institutions that employ them.  As the work ethic of OR nurses must be nothing less than impeccable, their resumes must reflect and communicate these standards.

Prior to the surgical procedures, professionals within this nursing specialty consult with surgeons to determine the healthcare priorities of individual patients.  Operating room nurses also ascertain the completion of all pre-surgical diagnostics in accordance with patients’ medical needs, counsel patients concerning the procedures, and assure the clinical efficacy of operating rooms.  The latter task includes ensuring that the equipment, instruments, and/or materials required for each surgery are present, sterile, and compliant with relevant standards of quality.  While OR nurses do not usually perform these duties directly, he or she instructs, oversees, and may also provide in-service training to clinical support staff engaged in these activities.

To assure that patients receive optimum care throughout the immediate, post-surgical stage of the treatment cycle, the OR nurse collaborates, before each surgery, with personnel in the Recovery Room and the Intensive Care Unit.  It is the duty of the OR nurse to communicate to his/her colleagues the specialized equipment and/or supplies that each patient will require subsequent to surgery.

After scrubbing and entering the surgical arena, the operating room nurse provides vigilant monitoring of patients’ vital signs, remaining fully prepared to respond quickly and judiciously – in concert with other members of the surgical team – to life-threatening emergencies such as cardiac arrest, respiratory failure, and hemorrhage.  In support of his or her clinical and administrative duties, operating room nursing professionals are also tasked with the review and preparation of records reflecting pertinent patient data.

In preparing effective resumes for employment and career advancement, OR nurses who prepare resumes that express their broad responsibilities and the impact of such accountabilities upon positive patient outcomes, operational efficiency, and institutional risk mitigation enhance their own potential to build  rewarding, meaningful, satisfying careers.