Story and photo by James Coburn, Staff Writer
Christina Mason felt a calling to enter the nursing field during high school. She wanted to be a nurse and began working as a CNA fresh out of high school in Oklahoma City.
“I actually worked here at the Edmond hospital,” said Mason, RN, OU Health Edmond Medical Center.
Today, she serves as an operating room (OR) nurse as the surgical coordinator for the robotic division. Mason has held the OR position for more than two years.
As the robotic coordinator, she is with the team performing a lot of general cases involving urology, gastric bypasses for weight loss, hernia repairs, gallbladder removal, and orthopedics. But she can circulate for almost any surgery.
She worked with a physician’s assistant there as a nurse aide more than 20 years ago at the Autumn Life Behavioral Center. She said that at the time, she had a false sense of nursing, based on her only experience as a CNA. (story continues below)
She changed her major to pre-med and got married and started a family. But she began to learn how expansive a nursing career is with its myriad of opportunities.
“After my husband had passed, I thought, ‘I already had a bachelor’s degree in biology. Let’s go back to my nursing roots,’” Mason said. “As far as going into nursing, I really loved the patient care aspect.”
Mason completed a fast-track program at Oklahoma City Community College for her associate degree. She already had a Bachelor of Science in Biology degree. She would earn her Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree at Southwestern Oklahoma State University.
Her entire six-year nursing career has been at OU Health Edmond Medical Center working in med/surg for nearly a year, and pre-admission testing for more than two years before transferring to the OR.
“I was fortunate that our director gave me a chance to come into the OR,” she said.
She felt more comfortable working in the OR where it is a completely different type of nursing than med-surg. She likes focusing on one patient at a time. Med/surg included having multiple patients at once, Mason said. If she is not in surgery, she is helping other nurses and scrub techs.
“In the OR your focus is just that one patient and their safety,” she continued.
She loves being part of a close-knit family member of the surgery team. The team includes an anesthesiologist, surgeon, nurse, and a scrub tech. The more they work together, the better they are familiar with what each other needs. They anticipate and communicate, Mason said.
“That is the best thing about the OR — the team and the smoothness of the surgeries,” she said.
Mason focuses on being compassionate with each patient. She gives 100 percent of her skilled effort. Being a nurse suits her A-type personality, she added.
“If you are well organized and you are very particular in your work, cases are much smoother. It makes patients safer if you’re prepared, and as an A-type personality, preparation is the difference.”
Her routine first involves evaluating patients by their chart before interviewing them prior to their surgery.
“We make sure everything is accurate. We are the patient’s advocate for the surgery,” Mason said. “So, after we bring them into the room, we help with anesthesia for going to sleep. So usually, the nurse is the last person the patient sees as well as the anesthesiologist, because we’re usually holding an oxygen mask and they’re looking right at us.”
Part of the system of care involves contacting the family with an update within 45 minutes of when surgery begins. Families are updated every 90 minutes during longer surgeries, Mason said.
There have been moments she will never forget. In thinking back on experiences she has witnessed in various capacities, she recalled being deeply touched when a patient took his last breath during an organ recovery surgery.
“He was unconscious during all of this but as he took his last breath, he had this beautiful smile on his face of just pure joy. This man was unconscious before that. And it just made me realize that he had seen Jesus as he was passing,” she said. “And to me, that touched me so deeply to know this man was going to a better place, even though he was in surgery for a recovery. It just touched my heart.”
She embraces life. She and her 12-year-old daughter enjoy taking their dog for a walk, hiking, riding bicycles, paddleboarding and enjoying being outdoors.
She also has a 22-year-old son and a stepson, age 26.
For more information about OU Health Edmond Medical Center, visit https://www.ouhealth.com/careers/.
