By Don Sadler
Most successful people, regardless of their career, can point to a mentor who helped and encouraged them at a critical juncture. Ruth Plotkin Shumaker, MS, BSN, RN, CNOR is no exception.
“Ruby Nell Winters was a tremendous mentor for me early in my career,” says Shumaker.
Winters scrubbed in with Dr. James D. Hardy on the first transplant of a chimpanzee’s heart into a human in 1964 and Shumaker eventually got to scrub in with Dr. Hardy and other notable surgeons. “I give credit to Mrs. Winters for all the good I have done over the years as a perioperative nurse.”
Shumaker’s nursing career began when she started working at a nursing home after graduating high school.
“I didn’t really know what I wanted to do, but I fell in love with what the nurses were doing for the residents,” she says. “That’s when I decided I wanted to be a nurse.”
After getting her associate degree in nursing in 1975, Shumaker went to work on a med-surg floor at a hospital in Jackson, Mississippi.
“I enjoyed my patients, but I never felt like I could do enough for them,” she says. “Two of my colleagues were working in the OR at the University of Mississippi Medical Center and encouraged me to join them, but my nursing school experience in the OR was not great so I was hesitant.”
Having decided that med-surg wasn’t for her, Shumaker eventually decided to take her friends up on their offer.
“This was a totally different experience from nursing school and I loved it,” she says. “It was where I felt I needed to be. One of my nursing school instructors actually called and asked me why I was working in the OR because I was such a good nurse. And I said, that’s exactly why I’m working in the OR!”
Thanks to guidance and encouragement from Ruby Nell Winters and Joyce Halback, Shumaker became active in the Association of periOperative Registered Nurses (AORN) early in her career. She has gone on to serve in a wide variety of roles with AORN, including the task force that formed the AORN Foundation. She served for 10 years on the AORN Foundation board of directors and as the AORN Foundation Vice President (1991-1993), on the AORN National board of directors (1990-1994) and as the AORN National President (1998-1999).
Shumaker was an AORN Award for Excellence in Perioperative Nursing recipient and at the 2025 Expo, she received the Outstanding Achievement in Mentorship-AORN Leadership award. In addition, the AORN Foundation Ruth Plotkin Shumaker endowment scholarship is awarded annually to nurses obtaining a BSN.
“I’m really passionate about the AORN Foundation and what it does for nurses,” says Shumaker.
During Shumaker’s tenure as president, the name of AORN was changed from the Association of Operating Room Nurses to the Association of periOperative Registered Nurses.
“There is so much more to the role of perioperative nurses than just the interoperative role,” she says. “During my career, the role has expanded so far outside of the operating room and we do so many different things.”
Shumaker is currently an executive consultant and partner at Perioperative Consulting LLC, a woman-owned consulting practice she co-founded in 2023 with Lillian H. Nicolette, MS, RN, CNOR, and Vangie Dennis, MSN, RN, CNOR, CMLSO, FAORN. As experienced perioperative nurses, they combine their clinical expertise and senior-level executive experience to get measurable results for hospitals, health systems, surgery centers and other healthcare industry leaders.
Before this, Shumaker was the executive director of perioperative services at Regional One Health Medical Center, a level one trauma center in Memphis, Tennessee.
“I loved that job and the people, but I decided I wanted a slower pace in my life because I was working really long hours,” she says. “But I knew I didn’t want to retire – there was so much more I felt I had to give to perioperative nursing.”
One of the many highlights of her nursing career was the opportunity she had to lecture and provide education for healthcare facilities and nursing organizations nationwide and internationally as a clinical nurse educator with Johnson & Johnson. This role took her to countries all over the world including Australia, China, Egypt, Finland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan and New Zealand, among many others.
Shumaker believes that the perioperative nursing profession is facing challenging times.
“There’s a tremendous nursing shortage right now and a great deal of this is due to retiring baby boomers,” she says. “We’re losing a lot of manpower as well as intellectual capital, and the operating room is being hit especially hard. We need to really be attuned to what the younger generation of nurses wants, which is different from what my generation wanted.”
On the positive side, Shumaker notes that nurses consistently rank among the most trusted professionals.
“Nurses need to focus on this and all the good we do for patients,” she says. “There will always be challenges, but I can honestly say that I have never regretted one single day of being a perioperative nurse.”
Outside of the OR, Shumaker is an animal rescue volunteer, serving with an organization that provides transport for rescue dogs.
“I’m part of a caravan that drives rescue dogs from city to city,” says Shumaker. Each volunteer drives a dog 90 miles or so to the next volunteer who drives the next leg, she explains.
“My husband is also involved and believes in animal rescue as much as I do,” says Shumaker. “It’s heartbreaking work sometimes, but I love it and am passionate about it.”
