Trainee experience

The Perioperative Nursing Fellowship follows the Periop 101: A Core Curriculum from the Association of Perioperative Registered Nurses.

Your training topics include:

In addition, there are specialty lectures on these topics:

During your perioperative nursing clinical experience, you care for patients who are undergoing general and specialty surgery, such as:

• Cardiac
• Colon and rectal
• Gynecologic, reproductive and endocrinologic
• Neurosurgery
• Organ transplant
• Orthopedic
• Otorhinolaryngologic, oral and ophthalmic
• Plastic
• Thoracic and vascular
• Trauma and critical care
• Urologic

You work closely with registered nurses, surgeons, anesthesiologists, nurse anesthetists, surgical technologists and other surgical team members to provide individualized care to patients undergoing surgery.

Mayo Clinic School of Health Sciences is committed to developing and maintaining the best education programs. The curriculum and other aspects of this program are assessed constantly and changed as necessary to ensure the highest quality training.

Schedule and hours

For the majority of the Perioperative Nursing Fellowship, your learning schedule includes eight-hour days, five days a week.

Department and faculty

The Perioperative Nursing Fellowship draws its faculty from Mayo Clinic's clinical, scientific and technical staffs. Faculty members are chosen for their commitment to teaching, as well as clinical practice and research. Many have published and lectured extensively and are highly regarded in their fields.

You have access to these individuals throughout your training, giving you the opportunity to learn directly from some of today's best practitioners of perioperative nursing.

The faculty, with assistance from community-based resources, direct and guide your clinical learning in an integrated system of practice and education. The program coordinators are clinically experienced certified nurses with master's degrees.

Visiting professors and lecturers

A hallmark of higher education excellence is the breadth and depth of information and experience provided to students by faculty and visiting experts. Many prominent professors visit Mayo Clinic each year to lecture on their areas of medical and scientific expertise.

As a student of Mayo Clinic School of Health Sciences, you are encouraged to learn from these valuable resources by attending all conferences, lectures and seminars prepared for students, residents, fellows and consulting staff.

Facilities

Mayo Clinic has two campuses in Arizona. The Phoenix campus includes the state-of-the-art Mayo Clinic Hospital, the first hospital entirely designed and built by Mayo Clinic. The 2022-2023 U.S. News & World Report ranked Mayo Clinic as the #1 Hospital in Arizona, and it has been in the top 20 on the Best Hospitals Honor Roll for six consecutive years. Services in numerous medical and surgical disciplines are provided, including outstanding programs in cancer treatment and organ transplantation.

The Mayo Clinic campus in Scottsdale is centered around a beautiful, five-story outpatient clinic. This modern facility contains extensive exam rooms, an outpatient surgery center equipped for general anesthesia, a full-service laboratory, pharmacy, patient education library, endoscopy suite, and a 188-seat auditorium for patient, staff, and student education programs.

Evaluation

Mayo Clinic School of Health Sciences uses evaluative tools that include:

• Written examinations
• Case presentations
• Demonstration of skills
• Self-assessment exercises
• Faculty review

Mayo's system of evaluation provides students and faculty with a comprehensive look at individual performance. This allows faculty and administrative staff to direct students who are experiencing academic difficulty to the appropriate support resources, including tutoring programs and counseling opportunities.

Graduation and certification

You receive a certificate of completion and 16 college credit hours from Mayo Clinic School of Health Sciences and will be awarded approximately 40 contact hours from the Association of Perioperative Registered Nurses (AORN) upon successful completion of the fellowship and comprehensive final exam.