Perioperative nursing.

" skipper, " coordinating patient care and case flow of the surgical suite. This role gives nurses autonomy and the opportunity to work with a multidisciplinary team. Other perioperative nurse roles are: certified registered nurse first assistant (CRNFA), specialty service leader, and perioperative nurse specialist. With perioperative nursing, the nursing process is used to assess, plan, and implement patient care. When assessing patients, the nurse must carefully review the patient's current and past health history; laboratory values; psychological status; cultural requirements; sensory and motion impairments ; and understanding of procedure. In most cases during an invasive procedure, patients are given anesthesia medications to produce an unconscious state. Patients rely on the perioperative nurse to be their advocate during this time. Each nursing care plan is revised as necessary throughout the surgical intervention, and typically addresses the following: patient safety (the most crucial), skin integrity, psychological/body image, efficient circulatory/gas exchange, and hypothermia. Health care institutions worldwide have recently updated and implemented policies to insure that interventions are performed on the correct site, and that the correct procedure is being performed. Today's advanced technology also increases the patient's needs for safety measures, as any equipment and instrumentation can negatively impact a patient's outcome if not used properly. Perioperative nurses must know how to use a wide variety of various surgical equipment and instrumentation, and quickly, as time is always of the essence. In addition, the perioperative features P erioperative nurses are essential to the delivery of safe patient care in the surgical or invasive procedural setting. A perioperative nurse is a registered nurse who, using the nursing process, develops a nursing care plan, and coordinates and delivers care to patients undergoing operative or other invasive procedures. " 1 In the past, perioperative nurses were generally viewed as the in hospital intraoperative care provider. With today's advanced technology, many procedures are now performed as outpatient surgery, in ambulatory surgical settings, radiology departments, and surgeons' office-based centers. The two traditional roles in perioperative nursing are scrub nurse and circulating nurse, both of which require knowledge of anatomy and physiology, surgical intervention procedures, and necessary equipment and instrumentation. Either a surgical technician or a registered nurse can fill the scrub nurse role, in which the nurse performs a surgical hand scrub and aseptically dons a surgical gown and gloves. The scrub nurse remains " sterile " and is responsible for directly assisting the surgical team …