By Don Sadler
Next year, Pat Thornton will celebrate a milestone career achievement: Her 50th year in nursing. Pat’s career started in 1976 when she graduated from Clayton Junior College with her ASN and went to work as an RNFA private surgical nurse.
“I’m really an artist at heart,” Pat says. “But my dad encouraged me to re-think my career choice by placing the Sunday newspaper on the kitchen table with ‘starving artist’ events and nursing want ads circled with a big marker. I decided I didn’t want to be a starving artist, so I went into nursing.”
Pat worked as a nursing assistant on a medical-surgical floor while in college and worked as a novice in the OR after graduation. She became a clinical expert with surgical assisting and gradually progressed to circulator, mentor, educator, RNFA, leader and director over her half-decade career. “Perioperative nursing has been a very rewarding career for me.”
When she first started out, perioperative nurses scrubbed in every specialty.
“I was very fortunate to get exposed to all the different roles of perioperative nursing,” Pat says.
Pat currently splits her time at two facilities. She works as a surgical manager and RNFA for dermatoplasty surgeon Dr. David T. Harvey at the Dermatology Institute in Newnan, Georgia; and as the CQI surgery coordinator at the Chastain Surgery Center in Atlanta, Georgia. She retired from her position as the director of surgical services for a regional health system in 2015 but this didn’t last long.
“I was very unhappy because I knew I had more to give,” she says. “I had to get back out there and do my thing and make money to spend on my grandkids.”
Her favorite part of being a perioperative nurse is advocating for the patients who are in her care.
“I’m grateful I can hold their hand during the induction,” says Pat. “I am the patient’s eyes and voice, and I will fight for my patients and their families no matter what. Some perioperative nurses won’t speak up, but I’ve never been that way. I have taken on many fights with surgeons while patients are lying on the table.”
Working at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta was especially rewarding.
“There’s no other feeling like when a mother gives you her baby to care for,” says Pat. “I get emotional just thinking about working with children.”
Pat has received numerous accolades throughout her career. She was recognized as the Perioperative Nurse of the Year six times by the Georgia Council of Perioperative Nurses and the Association of periOperative Registered Nurses (AORN) Atlanta chapter. In 2000, she received the National AORN Outstanding Achievement in Perioperative Clinical Education Award. Twenty years later, she received the 2020 AORN Outstanding Achievement in Perioperative Mentorship Award.
The career achievement Pat is most proud of is the work she and Brenda Ulmer did assisting in writing the legislative bill for surgical smoke evacuation in Georgia.
“Brenda and I worked tirelessly alongside other Georgia Council members to get this legislation passed and Georgia is now a surgical smoke-free state,” she says. “Being able to go to the state capitol and talk to legislators about the dangers of surgical smoke was very exciting.”
Being a proficient perioperative nurse requires a commitment to lifelong learning.
“After the shift is done, there is always homework,” Pat says. “Reviewing the day’s cases and being prepared for tomorrow’s cases, going to AORN meetings, networking and building relationships. It’s a challenge to learn to balance the profession and your personal life.”
Looking ahead, Pat believes that the perioperative nurse’s role will continue to grow more specialized and advanced by each surgical specialty.
“All of this is due to the complexity of equipment and surgeries moving outside the acute care facilities into specialty surgical centers,” she says. “Many surgeons have adapted this model by opening their own specialty surgery centers. They are requiring their surgical teams to fine turn their perioperative skills.”
Perioperative nursing is more to Pat than just a career or a profession: It’s a lifelong journey of learning.
“Perioperative nursing isn’t an eight-hour job,” she says. “For me, it’s a lifelong love. I encourage novice OR nurses to study daily on how to be better, safer and faster to reduce costs and improve patient outcomes. Learn how and why to reinforce and retain new skills.”
Pat still enjoys painting, along with spending time with “and spoiling” her two granddaughters: 16-year-old Kimber and 11-year-old Piper. Her favorite hobby now is feeding and caring for hummingbirds.
“This year I had my biggest hummingbird crop yet – probably close to 30 of them visiting the five feeders I placed around my house,” she says. “They are such a miracle!”
Her love for hummingbirds started 30 years ago, soon after her oldest sister Norma died of cancer.
“While sitting on my porch I spoke to Norma and said, ‘This is a good day to let me hold a hummingbird.’ As soon as I said it, a hummingbird landed near me and I held that little miracle for at least five minutes, looking at his little feet, eyelashes, long tongue and beautiful colored feathers. I thanked my sister and then it flew away. The entire summer that hummingbird would fly by my head and hover,” she shares.
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