Reaching out to future generations—introduction at the high school level

AORN Journal,  May, 2004  

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Perioperative Nursing: Introduction at the High School Level Task Force

As the nursing shortage continues, it is imperative to attract young people to nursing careers, including perioperative nursing. A recent study shows that patients benefit positively (eg, develop fewer infections) when an RN cares for them. Additionally, the study shows that when there is a reasonable nurse-to-patient ratio, patients receive more effective care. (1) Perioperative nurses are advocates of safe, quality patient care during surgical and invasive procedures, and health care consumers depend on them.

To ensure that there will be an adequate supply of perioperative RNs to care for surgical patients today and in the future, AORN members need to support their profession. AORN members can promote the benefits of perioperative nursing to young people and, thus, help ensure that qualified candidates enter the profession and move into positions vacated by retiring perioperative nurses.

Educating high school students enhances AORN's image and promotes perioperative nursing as a career choice (Table 1). Disseminating information about the profession can translate into more students who pursue perioperative nursing and, thus, produce more perioperative nurses to provide safe patient care.

BUILDING FOR THE FUTURE

A year ago, AORN past President Betty J. Shultz, RN, CNOR, created the Perioperative Nursing: Introduction at the High School Level Task Force to develop a program chapter members can use to introduce perioperative nursing at the high school level. The goals of the program include

* reflecting a positive image of nursing to the public,

* recruiting a diverse student body reflective of the regional population, and

* attracting students into nursing who have demonstrated academic abilities that will lead to a successful career in professional nursing.

Task force members used tools created for AORN's Student Nurse Tool Kit to plan and develop a distribution network for a grassroots program that targets high school students, high school and middle school career counselors, and other influential faculty members to promote perioperative nursing as a career.

Although students may have had personal contact with the surgical arena through their own experiences or those of a family member or friend, many of them have developed ideas and impressions about how the surgical environment works from the media, such as books, newspaper articles, movies, and television programs. Unfortunately, the media frequently looks at medical news and information from a physician's perspective only, so other health care opportunities and career choices may be overlooked.

Outreach efforts on the part of AORN chapters create an opportunity for students to meet perioperative nurses and learn about the OR and surgical patient care from the perspective of perioperative nurses (Table 2). Chapter members can reach out to high school students by

* visiting students in their classrooms;

* creating displays at museums, health fairs, local malls, and hospital lobbies; and

* hosting an open house in an OR.

ONGOING EFFORTS

AORN chapters nationwide recognize the need to contact students, and many of them already have programs in place to do so. Members of the task force conducted interviews with members working on successful outreach projects to learn more about what works. They found several programs that have been successful.

VISITING STUDENTS IN THEIR CLASSROOMS. Patricia M. O'Connell, RN, CNOR, San Francisco, recently was invited to speak at career day at a local high school. She spoke at three 35-minute sessions, and she shared information from her visit with the Perioperative Nursing: Introduction at the High School Level Task Force and with the clinical ladder committee at California Pacific Medical Center, San Francisco, to encourage others to speak to high school students about nursing.

O'Connell says that she asked the students at the all-girls school she visited who was thinking about becoming a nurse and how many of them knew a nurse. When she asked the students what they thought of when they thought about nurses, they had some difficulty. By the end of the day, O'Connell had concluded that the idea of helping others was appealing to the students, but they were unclear about how nurses do their jobs. "They need information on a very basic level," says O'Connell.

   It was tricky to describe my typical
   day in the OR in a way they could
   relate to. I think the next time, I'll
   pick a simple, common procedure,
   like an appendectomy, and describe
   what happens to the patient and
   what I do to care for that patient.

O'Connell also found that most of the students tended to lump all jobs in a hospital together. "They were not aware of the different ways to enter the profession," says O'Connell, and some thought they had to become a nurse's aide first. O'Connell found that the students were interested in her educational experience. They also asked questions about flexibility of hours and asked whether they could be ordered to work with no advance notice. "I got some very interesting questions," says O'Connell.