A DESCRIPTIVE STUDY OF TECHNOLOGY, RAW MATERIAL, AND STRUCTURE IN PERIOPERATIVE NURSING.
Contributors: University of Texas at Austin.
Published: 1993
Number of pages: 222
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.; Business Administration, Management.; Health Sciences, Health Care Management.
Description: This study described the nursing activities (e.g., technology), surgical technologists perform in low risk and high risk patient situations (e.g., raw material) in medical centers, community hospitals, and rural hospitals (e.g., structure). Additionally, this study compared perceptions of operating room directors, perioperative nurses, and surgical technologists to determine whether participants in rural hospitals disagreed significantly on the nursing activities surgical technologists perform.

In two phases of data collection, 343 operating room directors, perioperative nurses, and surgical technologists completed an anonymous survey. In phase one, volunteers attending a national education seminar completed and later distributed questionnaire packets to operating room directors, perioperative nurses, and surgical technologists in their home facilities.

Descriptive statistics revealed that surgical technologists frequently perform counts, sterile field, and equipment and supplies nursing activities. Surgical technologists do not frequently perform transportation, teaching, medications, O.R. environment, patient monitoring, and patient's rights. Two tailed t-tests showed that the level of risk in a patient situation affected perceptions of how frequently surgical technologists perform transportation, teaching, sterile field, O.R. environment, and patient's rights nursing activities. One-way analysis of variance with post hoc tests inferred that subjects from medical center and community hospitals agreed more closely on the activities surgical technologists performed in equipment and supplies, counts, O.R. environment, and patient's rights as compared to subjects from rural hospitals. Comparing perceptions of subjects from three types of hospitals, surgical technologists perform counts, equipment and supplies, O.R. environment, and patient's rights activities in rural hospitals more frequently than surgical technologists in medical centers and community hospitals. A MANOVA test with post hoc analysis of the rural subsample determined: (a) operating room directors' and perioperative nurses' perceptions agree more closely with each other than surgical technologists' perceptions of activities surgical technologists perform in the categories of sterile field, equipment and supplies, counts, O.R. environment, and patient's rights and (b) the level of risk made a difference in the nursing activities surgical technologists perform in transportation, teaching, sterile field, O.R. environment, and patient's rights.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 54-08, Section: B, page: 4075.

Thesis (PH.D.)--THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN, 1993.

School code: 0227.