Learning Outcomes

As licensed health care practitioners, learners will practice in accordance with professional standards of practice throughout the course. In this course, learners 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, learners should be able to:

• Implement current ORNAC Standards of Care and relevant theory in the circulating role.
• Demonstrate the ability to organize and prioritize core entry-level activities in the circulating role for patients undergoing common, less complex surgery.
• Use a practice framework to gather information in an organized and systematic manner through patient assessment, conversational interview, and the preoperative checklist.
• Analyze various sources of information to identify potential and actual patient and procedure problems.
• Communicate assessment findings in a timely, comprehensive, and systematic manner to team members.
• Use appropriate and effective communication techniques with patients, families, and team members.
• Correctly complete perioperative documentation.
• Apply surgical conscience to patient care in the circulating role.
• Employ ethical, competent and safe actions with patients and families.
• Advocate for patients in the circulating role.
• Enact circulating nurse activities to protect self, patient, and team members from risks and hazards encountered in the perioperative environment.
• Enact a plan for individualized patient-centered care in the circulating role using a clinical decision-making framework.
• Engage in independent and collaborative clinical decision-making activities related to patient assessment and admission, anesthesia induction and emergence, surgical intervention and the sterile environment.
• Begin to combine the circulating and scrub nurse roles at the novice level.

Effective as of Fall 2021