OR elective offered at UIndy

By Hannah Biedess EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

The University of Indianapolis is offering an operating room nursing elective which is a hands-on learning experience for nursing students thinking about going into the operating room, according to Assistant Professor of Nursing Toni Morris. The elective started in 2019 after a survey said students were interested in taking an operating room course, Morris said. The class is offered during the second summer session and meets once a week for seven weeks for seven to eight hours a day, she said. The students work closely with their clinical partner, Community Health Network, according to Morris.

“Five days they're in the classroom and two days, they're in an actual operating room with an actual nurse,”

Morris said. According to Morris, the elective is unique because they get hands-on experience in an operating room.

Students get to sanitize and put in protective gear or “scrub in” into surgery, according to Morris, and able to scrub into surgery,” Morris said. sometimes get to hold retractors and sterilely open things and help set up for surgeries. Morris said students are paired with a nurse and learn how to interview patients, position the patient and pass instruments to the surgeon.

Senior nursing major Alyssa Albitz said students learned how to circulate, scrub and interview patients for their surgery or procedure. She said students taking the class get to practice the skills learned in a real OR.

“During the course, we were able to take a day for circulating and a day for scrubbing and we were paired with a nurse, and were able to practice those skills in a real OR,” Albitz said.

Senior nursing major Destiny Clark said the elective allowed her to gain a lot of foundational knowledge. She said she always wanted to be an OR nurse and this elective solidified that.

“It's really [a] pretty amazing experience for an undergraduate to be people, as individuals and groups, she said.

“But this helps lay foundational knowledge and it sets you apart if you apply to jobs and stuff,” Clark said.

Morris said the elective not only helps the students, but hospitals as well. Sometimes nurses think that they want to work in the operating room and then go through the training and realize that they do not want to, according to Morris, and this elective starts at the student level and allows them to get a feel of working in an operating room. Morris said that it costs the hospitals around $78,000 to fully train OR nurses that they do not get back.

“The burden of training nurses in the OR are largely on the hospitals, because nurses come to the hospital and if they don't have any OR training then they go through a six to nine month intensive program in the hospital system to learn the specialty of operating room nursing,” Morris said.

Morris said students are able to see if they like working in the OR and it saves hospitals time and money. She said the skills learned during this course apply to other specialties as well. Those could include maternity nursing, the intensive care unit and many more, Morris said.

“It's the skills that they learn that are very transferable and applicable to multiple other specialties in nursing,” Morris said.

“We hope that it might help us to strengthen ties that we already have with the tribal groups,” Wynn said. “...I think it's an important step in terms of equity and inclusion on campus.”

Moore said that this is a big step for the university as it shows that UIndy has a respect and understanding for the Indigenous population on campus.

She said she thinks that it will bring awareness to those populations, and then attract more students to attend. Moore said the task force is open to feedback.

“I strongly encourage everyone to read the acknowledgment act, and reach out to anyone who may be on the task force just to see what they can do in the upcoming action steps that we're going to be taking,” Moore said.