AORN OF NEW HAMPSHIRE

CHAPTER 3001

Meetings

Special Events

Directions

Officers

Newsletter

OFFICERS FOR 2001

President – Mike Chamberlain

President Elect – Roanne Rogerson

Secretary -- Ruth Sedgwick

Treasurer -- Lorraine Heslop

BOARD of DIRECTORS:

Eva Daniels

Monte Wasileski

Joyce Hurd

NOMINATING COMMITTEE:

Marianne Thines

    This month’s spotlight focuses on Pauline Smith, a past
     president of AORN Chapter 3001.
Pau     Pauline began her nursing career after graduating from
     Franklin County Public Hospital in Greenfield, Massachusetts
     with a diploma in nursing. As we spoke, Pauline remarked “I’ve   en been working full time in Nursing for forty years and it was a
     wonderful career choice for me."
          She worked as an ICU nurse and for a time she was a
p   private scrub nurse for a cardio-vascular-thoracic surgeon in in Texas. At one time she even worked as a perfusionist.
            Pauline had the wonderful and challenging opportunity to    elp help open a brand new hospital in El Paso, Texas, the Sierra      M Medical Center.
           She has been in Operating Room management for the past t    twenty–two years and is presently the Nurse Manager of the O Operating Room at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in      ba Lebanon, NH.
             Mrs. Smith lives in Norwich VT with her husband David. S   She is the mother of two grown daughters, one of whom is a   n    nurse in Burlington, VT.
            Pauline has another new challenge; she is now a first time g    grandmother to first grandchild, Ethan.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Saturday, January 12^th, 2002
(Snow date-January 19^th, 2002)

Topic: Cultivating Quality & Pitfalls to Avoid in Documentation

Speaker: Suzanne Beyea RN, PhD.
Registration 8:30 – 9:00
Program 9:00 to 12:30
Business Meeting to follow.
3.0 Contact Hours
Location: Dwinell Room
Alice Peck Day Hospital
125 Mascoma Street
Lebanon, NH

Saturday, March 23, 2002

Topic: Your Herbal Pharmacy

Speaker: Happy Griffiths, Herbalist for Enfield Shaker Museum for the past 15 years.

Also: Dr. Kathleen Chaimberg MD will speak on Gingko Biloba and You – Anesthetic Implications of Herbal Remedies. She is an Asst. Professor of Anesthesiology at DHMC in Lebanon, NH

C.E.U.s will be offered and a business meeting will follow.
Registration- 8:30-9:00
Program - 9:00 to 12:30

May 2002. NH Walk for Nurses

Sponsored by NHNA to raise public awareness about nurses and nursing.

Our web site has a section called Nurses Notes, where we have just started a new offering. We thought it would be helpful to share ideas and information that will help us in performing our jobs.

As the need for nurses grows, we are seeing an increase in preceptorship in the O.R. It’s a difficult time for everyone, the new nurse intern as well as the seasoned nurse who has now become the teacher.

Some of the topics we want to write about may seem obvious to many of you who have been in perioperative nursing for years, but maybe for others these tid-bits may shed some light on the mysteries of how we do what we do.

Please bear with us as we try out this new venture and please let us have some feedback.

Our first topic is Planning, by

Mike Chamberlain RN, our current President.

PLANNING

“Plans are useless, planning is essential”- Dwight Eisenhower

The everyday goal of any periopertive nurse is to provide quality care to the patients we see. This can be accomplished by planning ahead and being prepared for the day’s caseload.

There are several ways to accomplish this:

First, review a pick list or preference card to determine which particular supplies, instruments, equipment, and positioning devises might be needed for a given procedure.

Second, obtain a textbook of perioperative nursing to study any procedure with which you may be unfamiliar. This offers insight into the procedure itself as well as details of patient care.

Third, seek the advice of a more experience perioperative nurse. Ask that individual questions about patient care and surgeon preferences. Try to perform these three tasks the day before you are assigned to do a case. One other way to prepare is to keep notes every time you participate in a given procedure and refer to those notes as needed.

By planning ahead the Perioperative nurse can be prepared and avoid potential pitfalls, keep thing running smoothly, and provide quality patient care.