South Dakota

The operating room environment is where a variety of health care professionals work together as an efficient team towards a successful surgery outcome. The operating room nurse, also known as a perioperative registered nurse, takes care of a client before, during, and after surgery.

Perioperative nursing is just one of the many available nursing specialty areas. Registered nurses (RN) who choose to work in this specialty find employment in the surgical departments of various hospitals, ambulatory surgery centers, and clinics. The annual salary of a full-time, experienced perioperative nurse may reach $80,000. How much money an operating room nurse earns yearly depends on the size of the employer, years of professional experience, job responsibilities, and education level.

The job of a perioperative registered nurse is to care for a surgery patient by applying the nursing process. Assessing, planning, and implementing a plan of care, as well as providing education and coordinating the care received by each client are all responsibilities of the operating room nurse. With experience, a perioperative registered nurse may become the director of an operating room. In this case the nurse has additional job responsibilities which include managing the operating room, coordinating and scheduling nursing staff and balancing budgets.