Perioperative Theory 3 (with AORN Periop 101): The Nurse in the Circulating Role NSPO 7451

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 Guidelines for Perioperative Practice 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.
• Use relevant knowledge of Periop 101: A Core Curriculum to inform novice entry-level circulating nurse activities: patient and worker safety, aseptic practice, equipment safety, patient care, and sterilization.
• Use a practice framework in the circulating role to assess and admit patients of different ages with actual and potential health problems.
• Identify how circulating nurses employ a patient-centered 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.
• Carry out circulating nurse activities that minimize risks and hazards and promote patient and team safety.
• Identify the potential emotional and physical impact of the perioperative environment on patients, families, and team members.
• Apply communication techniques that promote effective perioperative team partnerships and collaboration.
• Accurately complete the perioperative documentation required in the circulating role.
• Critically analyze independent and collaborative activities of circulating nurses that facilitate safe and ethical patient care within the perioperative team.
• Critically analyze how circulating nurses apply surgical conscience to promote patient safety and healing.
• Identify how circulating nurses enact caring with patients undergoing surgery and their families.
• Identify how circulating nurses advocate for patients and families.
• Explain how the circulating nurses use ways of knowing the individual (case, patient and person) to care for patients.
• Prepare and 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 Fall 2025