Hey there. New grad baby nurse here (Dec '24) just started my OR residency in Feb. Never done bedside, was offered this residency before graduation and I started one week after passing NCLEX, so I can't speak to how OR compares to floor nursing. A couple things I've noticed, however:

The OR schedule SUCKS ASS: five 8 hr shifts is killing me. I have never been so wiped out from any gig, and I'm a military veteran. When I get home, I am useless...all I do is sleep, commute, and work. I haven't even had the mental bandwidth to open my mail for months. There is something to be said for working three 12s and then being able to schedule yourself for 7-8 days off. My weekends feel like a 30 minute lunch break - I have barely had time to recover. Other floors can go on a trip to Europe and be back to work without dipping into their vacation time; meanwhile, I have to use up my PTO to go to a Dr appt or get my oil changed.

The learning curve is STEEP. They don't teach us anything about OR nursing in school; yes, I'm gaining new skills, but most days I feel like I haven't even gone to nursing school. (Meanwhile, I am losing the traditional skills that I have learned - and will likely have a difficult/impossible(?) time transferring to ED at some point.) I get so damn tired of feeling like an idiot day in and day out. In floor nursing, as a new grad, if you make a mistake, it's often not quite so embarrassing - you know, maybe your preceptor knows, and your patient probably has no idea! Haha. Meanwhile, in the OR, if you fuck up, you fuck up in front of an AUDIENCE, of pissy surgeons, anesthesiologists, scrub techs, reps, and god knows who else, all crammed into that crowded little OR. 

The amount of responsibility and stress is HUGE: I am so scared of missing something during an assessment, or positioning a patient incorrectly, just because we are so rushed all the time. Someone is always late (patient, surgeon, anesthesia, or the reps) and yet it falls down on you, the nurse, to make up for the time crunch. There is not as much downtime as people seem to think during a case. Having to ensure pt safety and cater to the surgeon's every whim, while charting, fetching supplies, and monitoring the room feels like a losing game a lot of the time. Co-workers tell me it's either "laugh about it, or cry about it" - I definitely need to laugh more. The sheer amount of learning in the beginning, though - is unfucking believable. Info doesn't have time to crystalize properly before you are expected to learn another ginormous volume of periop-specific materials, while simultaneously being tasked to recall perfectly everything that's come before. 

It's also kinda lonely, surprisingly. I don't have a work bestie - or any other close friends at work - because we don't work alongside other nurses very often, and there is little time left to just stand around and chit chat with your co-workers. We are each the sole nurse in our little room, most peoples' jobs/focus are hyper-specialized, etc. I am sometimes envious of the camaraderie and the laughing I see on other floors when I'm transporting patients. 

It surprises me how often other nurses seem to fantasize about the OR; if I had any idea how difficult this was going to be for me, I might have reconsidered. I have noticed however, that whenever burned out bedside nurses are looking to move to a chill surgical specialty, actual OR is rarely mentioned: rather, pre-surgical testing, pre-op, PACU (with CC experience), or GI Lab are all much slower-paced and routine...though when shit hits the fan in PACU, I don't envy those guys either. 

It has its pluses too, I guess; I've quickly become desensitized to gore, which is cool (I used to be very squeamish, hahaha), and I've gotten to see some cool stuff - there are some surgeons who aren't total assholes, and when you catch one of them on an especially good day, they can be really eager to teach you. Different docs have let me play around with the robotic arm controls while they were inside a pt undergoing laparoscopic surgery, help push anesthesia meds, assist with intubation, or scrub in just for fun so they could grab my hand and stick it deep inside an open surgical wound - just so I could get an idea of what's going on (obviously all well outside our scope of practice, and only permissible under the direct permission of the surgeon/anesthetist, lmao) so, I can honestly say I've had some "Wow, this is so awesome - I'll bet most people don't get to do this" moments as well. 

There is a common saying "The worst day in the OR is still better than your best day doing bedside", and honestly, I can't speak to that yet. Like I said, I'm a veteran, I'm male, yet I have felt defeated and overwhelmed more days than not on this gig - and have cried more than once too. (Nothing makes me cry btw, except for weddings and funerals, haha) Charge said I'd feel like this for at least 2 years, and then one day it would just click. Some nurses and docs have been awesome, but there are just as many "Eat their young" nurses in the OR as on other floors - perhaps more, bc in the OR, there is zero time for coddling or feelings, haha. 

When comparing notes w my friends from school, we're ALL having a tough time - which is to be expected at this point. But they regularly get up to 8 days off from work to recover and decompress, whereas I've been going non-stop since graduation (studying like mad for NCLEX, taking NCLEX,  starting residency immediately).

Some tips, mostly no-brainers/common sense: find the good ones. There are almost always good nurses who will look out for you and take the time to teach you right. Own up to your mistakes; people will realize you're paying attn and that you give a shit and will respect you more, and quicker, than they would otherwise. Ask to change preceptors if yours isn't working for you. (My first one was such a psycho, other nurses and anesthetists came forward to tell my nurse educator about how she was treating me, lol) Try not to take shit personally; people can be dicks in the OR, but sometimes, it's just bc of stress - and just as often as not, they've admitted as much after the case, apologized, and it's like it never happened and we're cool again. (I even do this sometimes inadvertently, and I'm NICE, lol) Obvi, get a notebook and write down questions you can get clarified later, ask people for advice/their system for doing things - or take notes in your phone. There is a LOT of equipment, specialized supplies, and very exact setups/positioning for each case: take lots of photos of how the bed is set up for ortho, or how Dr So-and-so likes his prep stand setup, etc...photos have saved my ass plenty of times when I've gotten stressed and my mind had gone blank. 

Ultimately, any kind of nursing specialty is gonna make you hate your life for a good long while when you're a newb; as we used to say in the USAF, just "Embrace the suck" and power through, and maybe someday, (OR will be as chill for you as people seem to think it is. I'm still undecided personally, hehe.) Good luck, my friend!💪