Perioperative Theory 3: The Nurse in the Circulating Role NSPO 7450

As a healthcare practitioner, you are expected to follow professional standards of practice throughout all SN programs and courses. In this course, you will have opportunities to use the processes of critical thinking, systematic inquiry, communication, collaboration, leadership, professionalism, and clinical decision-making. Upon successful completion of this course, you should be able to:

• Use relevant, current ORNAC Standards of Care to explain activities in the circulating role: admitting and assessing patients; monitoring patients; assisting with anesthesia induction and emergence; positioning; performing skin preps; setting up the sterile environment; counting; and processing specimens.
• Explain how to use a practice framework in the circulating role to assess and admit patients of different ages with actual and potential health problems.
• Explain how circulating nurses employ a patient-centred plan of care to anticipate and address physiological and emotional risks of anesthesia for patients.
• Identify risks and hazards associated with the perioperative environment and equipment for patients and team members.
• Describe circulating nurse activities that minimize risks and hazards and promote patient and team safety.
• Explain the potential emotional and physical impact of the perioperative environment on patients, families, and team members.
• Describe communication techniques that promote effective perioperative team partnerships and collaboration.
• Discuss perioperative documentation performed by circulating nurses.
• Critically analyze independent and collaborative activities of circulating nurses that facilitate safe and ethical patient care within the perioperative team.
• Explain how circulating nurses apply surgical conscience to promote patient safety and healing.
• Explain how circulating nurses enact caring with patients and families.
• Explain how circulating nurses advocate for patients and families.
• Explain how circulating nurses use ways of knowing the individual (case, patient and person) to care for patients.
• Communicate a plan for patient-centered care in the circulating role, using reflective critical-thinking skills and a clinical decision-making framework.

Effective as of Spring/Summer 2023