Surgical care practitioners in the UK - Essay Example

ing Time Directives must also be accounted for in the emergent field of Surgical Care Practitioners and their placement in the realm of healthcare management. The objective is to understand how a theatre nurse may progress into the role of surgical care practitioner. (Troy, 398) Theatre nursing plays two major roles and those two roles are scrub nurse, and the circulator. The scrub nurse is the one who is sterile, and the circulator is the one who is not sterile. Surgical care practitioners would in fact be a new facet to surgical procedures in the operating theatre.

The surgical care practitioner has the knowledge of infection control and maintains a safe environment, ensuring a sterile field for the patients and the rest of the medical staff. As a surgical care practitioner you have all the information of the anatomy and physiology of patients to ensure the best standards of care as a medical professional. The added benefits of surgical care practitioners would be in the fact that they are an asset in the operating theatre. They provide assistance to physicians and surgeons with the high level of training that is pursued prior to their licensure.

The introduction of the surgical care practitioner would in fact augment the severe shortage of medical personnel in hospitals throughout the UK. There are problems in that junior physicians on occasion will consider surgical care practitioners to be a threat to their advancement or their position. Surgical care practitioners are involved in many different duties within their job description. Those duties include carrying out pre-operative assessment and physical examination as directed by the surgical team.

Surgical care practitioners would also assist in patient preparation for surgery. This includes venepuncture, male and female catheterisation, patient positioning and preparation. (Troy, 321) There seems to be a common misconception that surgical care practitioners will share more patient contact than junior