7 Essential Scrub Nurse Interview Questions to Ask
A scrub nurse is a specialized operating room nurse that assists the surgeon during a procedure. Scrub nurses play an important role in maintaining the sterile field and ensuring patient safety throughout the procedure. This specialty requires great attention to detail and patience, so it’s important to ask the right scrub nurse interview questions when hiring for this role.
Writing a thorough job description will help you attract qualified candidates, but the interview is where you can really get a sense of their personal qualities. To help you find the best nurse for your surgical team, we’ll outline seven key questions to ask and what types of answers to listen for.
Scrub Nurse Interview Questions
Scrub nurses require a very specific set of skills and knowledge to be successful team members in the operating room. Here are seven questions that will help you evaluate these essential qualifications and traits in your candidates.
1. What inspired you to become a scrub nurse?
Scrub nursing is vastly different from other clinical specialties, so candidates often have an individualized reason for pursuing it. This question is a great opener, since it invites the candidate to share more about their personal motivations for becoming a scrub nurse.
Listen for answers that indicate genuine interest in surgical settings or helping patients remain safe during a procedure. It may be a red flag if a candidate primarily focuses on potential earnings without any regard to what the role entails.
2. What steps do you take to maintain a sterile field throughout a procedure?
One of the primary responsibilities of a scrub nurse is to ensure that the surgical field remains sterile. Candidates pursuing a scrub position should have a solid understanding of this and be prepared to follow established protocols on infection prevention.
Listen for answers that showcase a candidate’s understanding of what the sterile field consists of. Strong answers will touch on how various instruments should be handled and the activities of other team members within the operating room.
3. How do you prepare and keep track of instruments throughout a procedure?
Scrub nurses are also responsible for preparing instruments before procedures and counting them at the end of procedures to ensure nothing gets lost inside a patient. This question will give you an idea of how familiar a candidate is with instrument handling and their process for ensuring that the team has everything they need from start to finish.
While scrub nurses play a large role in keeping instruments sterile, this is a task that also requires strong teamwork. Listen for answers that indicate a candidate’s ability to communicate with the circulating nurse and other team members to ensure that they can fulfill their duties without breaking the sterile field.
4. What would you do if you noticed the surgeon was breaking the sterile field?
The scrub nurse is often the one keeping an eye on everything within the sterile field — including their team members. Sometimes, the surgeon may break the sterile field without realizing and it’s important for candidates to feel comfortable intervening appropriately.
Strong answers to scrub nurse interview questions like this will demonstrate that a candidate is not afraid to notify team members when they are breaking protocol. Candidates should understand that patient safety comes first and be ready to professionally and respectfully address team members when necessary.
5. How would you work to support the circulating nurse?
The circulating and the scrub nurse have complementary roles in the operating room, so it’s essential for them to know how to work together. The circulating nurse oversees everything outside of the sterile field to ensure the scrub nurse doesn’t have to. As such, the circulating nurse relies on the scrub nurse to communicate all their needs throughout the procedure.
This question assesses how well a candidate understands both their role and the circulating nurse’s role. Strong answers will indicate that a candidate has a clear sense of their responsibilities in context to others and is able to effectively communicate with the team.
6. Explain your process for disposing of hazardous materials in the operating room.
In order to maintain the sterile field, scrub nurses must also understand how to dispose of hazardous materials, such as contaminated gauze, sharps, and scalpels. This question allows you to assess a candidate’s understanding of proper protocols and processes for disposing different types of waste.
Listen for answers that indicate a candidate’s familiarity with different types of hazardous waste in the operating room. Strong answers will include examples of what types of bins that different materials should go in and how they should be handled during a procedure.
7. What steps would you take to prepare yourself for long hours in the operating room?
Scrub nurses often have to spend long hours standing in the same spot, since they cannot break the sterile field without scrubbing back into the operating room again. Thus, it’s important that scrub nurse interview questions (and answers) also touch on a candidate’s attitude toward working on longer procedures.
An important part of scrub nursing is being able to mentally and physically handle the demands of the job. Listen for answers that indicate a candidate has the patience to work in an operating room setting and understands the self-care needed to prepare themselves for each procedure.
Looking for Quality Candidates to Interview? We’ll Help You Find Them
Asking the right scrub nurse interview questions is one thing, but it’s important to first attract nursing professionals who are qualified and interested in applying. Not sure where to start? IntelyCare’s job board can help you reach a nationwide network of nurses who are ready to take the next step in their careers.