Intraoperative nursing roles and responsibilities : an educational poster for nursing students

Abstract

For more than a century, surgical care has been an important and essential part of healthcare in the world. The increasing numbers of accidents, various illnesses and diseases will make surgical care play a major role in the future as well. Intraoperative nursing phase begins when the patient arrives in the surgery and anesthesia unit for their operation. Nursing in the operation room setting is typically intensive and systematic. Patient should be cared for from a holistic perspective, both physical and emotional needs taken care of. One cornerstone of intraoperative nursing is patient safety which is also the base for quality care. Patient safety is a broad topic consisting of many different sub-topics, all of them contributing to patient safety. Some of these sub-topics are intraoperative competency including different nursing roles and responsibilities. To work as an intraoperative nurse, one must have adequate competence. In addition to a solid theoretical background, also teamwork, communicational skills, decision making skills, precision, responsibility, and good clinical skills are needed.

The aim of this thesis is to produce an educational poster for nursing students to use as a support in learning during their nursing studies. Students receive basic perioperative nursing education as a part of the core competence studies during their nursing studies. The purpose of this thesis is to help develop nursing students’ knowledge about intraoperative nursing, intraoperative nursing roles and responsibilities. The co-creation method was used in co-operation with Laurea University of Applied Sciences who is the work life partner in this project. This thesis consists of the written theoretical part that backs up the information presented in the practical part of this thesis which is the educational poster created for nursing students. Educational posters are good tools in teaching and learning due to their cost-effective way of sharing very versatile information. The contents of educational posters are typically carefully selected, narrowing down a topic to emphasize the most vital information about a subject.

The end result of this fast-paced work was an informative poster about intraoperative nursing. The content of the poster was limited to the most common important responsibilities of nursing during an operation. Feedback about the poster was collected directly from the target group through an online survey. The feedback received was positive and respondents said the poster was very informative and useful. Each respondent said they had learnt something new about the topic after looking at the poster. There would be much more to talk about concerning other nursing areas such as the other perioperative phases. As the whole health care field is a quickly changing and developing, it would be a good idea to update the information included in this poster when it is outdated.