Mary “Betty” Roddick, RN, CNOR
Nurse in Charge, Operating Room
High-tech Nursing in the OR
At BWH, where we have 40 operating rooms, our nurses are among the most highly educated in their practice. Many of us have achieved our current skill levels by attending specialized education programs to learn new modalities and techniques pertinent to surgical procedures.
Because we are so busy and focused on keeping everything running smoothly, we often don’t notice how much has changed during our careers. The beginning of a new year is an ideal time to pause and look back — to show our appreciation to perioperative nurses for their ongoing development and expertise, and to inspire young nurses to follow this example as they assist in patient procedures of the future.
When I started my nursing career in 1960 at the Free Hospital for Women, a forerunner of BWH, doing surgery with laser beams or computer-controlled robotic arms was the stuff of science fiction. Today, such leading techniques are part of our ongoing repertoire, and they are the harbinger of more sophisticated procedures to come. Each day as our operating room nurses approach their shift, we are confident that we are technically ready to meet any and all of our patients’ surgical needs, ranging from a simple hernia repair to an complex eight-hour procedure to excise a tumor. We are organized into specialty teams, who continuously learn new procedures and mentor others.
Although it’s our practice to be current in technology, we also understand the need to be humanistic and to recognize the extreme vulnerability of surgical patients as they undergo anesthesia or face the prospect of a difficult recovery. The more their defenses are down, the more we need to reassure them, to ask how things are going, to ensure that their family’s needs are met.
In the years ahead, the best minds and hands of medicine will offer exciting new techniques to replace old procedures. But one thing will never go out of vogue — the caring side of nursing — and that’s what gives our profession its well-earned heart and soul.