Theatre nurse, Starship Hospital

Mina Shahbazpour runs the acute theatre for emergency surgery at Starship children's hospital. Picture / Richard Robinson

Name: Mina Shahbazpour
Age: 25
Role: Theatre nurse and floor co-ordinator, Starship Hospital operating rooms
Working hours: 8am-5pm or 1-10pm each day, on a five-day roster
Average pay: $35,000 to $51,500
Qualifications: Bachelor of Nursing 

Describe how you got this job?

After I did my training I applied and started as a staff theatre nurse and worked my way up to a senior position of floor co-ordinator.

Describe what you do?

I run the acute theatre for children's emergency surgery and co-ordinate the staffing for the day, overlooking the operating rooms. I also circulate as a theatre nurse and scrub sometimes.

Scrubbing is when you scrub up, gown up and assist the surgeon and circulating is when you are assisting the scrub nurse to set up. The specialties we do are orthopaedics, general, urology, gastroenterology, respiratory and ear, nose and throat surgery.

Most of the patients are children up to 15 years of age.

A theatre nurse looks after a patient from pre-op care to theatre, under the anaesthetic until they are awake again. Then patients are handed over to a recovery care nurse.

What have you had to do to succeed at this job?

Work hard, keep a positive attitude and enjoy being a nurse.

What sort of training or experience do you need?

You need to be a registered nurse, so you need a degree. To be a theatre nurse there is a "new to operating room" paid orientation programme run by the Auckland District Health Board operating rooms which is run twice a year for 12 weeks. Someone with no experience automatically goes on the programme.

What skills and qualities do you need?

Inter-personal skills, good open communication, organisation skills, time management, and the clinical expertise that you gain at work.

Best part of the job?

Getting the job done every day. It is quite satisfying, especially in the acute theatre, when you start with 20 cases and by the end of the afternoon you have five left and everything is running smoothly. Plus it is great working with the absolutely amazing team we have here.

Most challenging part?

Putting up with different personalities among the staff we have and the constant change in the priority of cases.

How do you define success in this job?

Doing my best for the patients and seeing the smooth running of the operating rooms so patient waiting times are reduced.

What are your career hopes for future?

I am doing some post-graduate study, a certificate in peri-operative nursing through the University of Auckland, and to maintain my current role as I love it and it is a great job.

If I wanted a job like yours how would I go about it, and what qualifications would I need?

Most polytechs offer the degree programme so interested people need to do that. I worked as a health care assistant before I did nursing to see if I liked it.

I didn't do much health sciences at school but working as a health care specialist helped me decide to be a nurse.

There are so many jobs out there for nurses, the variety is amazing. You can look for jobs on the ADHB website, in the papers or contact the ADHB recruitment centre.

What advice would you have for someone contemplating a career like yours?

For theatre nursing, it is a fantastic job. I recommend it. It is very challenging but very rewarding as well.

My mum was a theatre nurse so I knew what was involved. She always talked about it and I thought I would like to do that as well. I didn't really have any interest in ward nursing.

During the nursing degree programme, there are opportunities to choose theatre as a placement, so you can see if you like it over that month. You can do theatre nursing as a pre-registration placement and that involves about two or three months of training as a student.

If pre-registration nurses like to apply for a job in that time, they can, and come back as a new grad staff nurse. By two or three months you definitely know if you want to do this or not.