Medical & Nursing Studies 20 flashcards ~10 min

Surgical and Perioperative Nursing

About this deck

Surgical nursing requires tracking a patient's care across three distinct phases, and this deck of 20 flashcards is organized around exactly that structure. You'll start with preoperative care — informed consent, the purpose of pre-op checklists, and why patients are kept NPO before surgery — then move into intraoperative concepts including the roles of the scrub nurse versus the circulating nurse and the different types of anesthesia. The deck spends significant time on postoperative care, covering PACU monitoring, common post-op complications like atelectasis and deep vein thrombosis, and the signs of surgical site infection versus dehiscence and evisceration. It finishes with pain management approaches and wound healing stages. Suited to nursing students, NCLEX candidates, and anyone working toward a perioperative or surgical nursing certification, this deck focuses on the assessment priorities and complications most frequently tested in surgical nursing exams.

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To ensure the patient understands the procedure, risks, benefits, and alternatives before agreeing to it.

To reduce the risk of aspiration during anesthesia.

Manages the overall operating room environment, documentation, and patient safety outside the sterile field.

Works within the sterile field, handing instruments and supplies directly to the surgeon.

General, regional (e.g., spinal, epidural), and local.

A rare, life-threatening reaction to certain anesthesia drugs causing rapid rise in body temperature and muscle rigidity.

Post-Anesthesia Care Unit.

Airway, breathing, and circulation (ABCs).

Partial collapse of lung tissue, a common postoperative complication from shallow breathing.

Encourage incentive spirometry, deep breathing, and early ambulation.

Prolonged immobility.

Redness, warmth, swelling, purulent drainage, and fever.

Partial or complete separation of the layers of a surgical wound.

Protrusion of internal organs through a separated surgical wound — a medical emergency.

Cover the area with sterile saline-soaked gauze and notify the surgeon immediately.

Hemostasis, inflammatory, proliferative, and maturation.

To remove excess fluid or blood from a surgical site during healing.

Temporary lack of intestinal motility, common after abdominal surgery.

Decreasing blood pressure with increasing heart rate.

To verify correct patient, procedure, and surgical site immediately before starting surgery.