CAREERS IN NURSING:
HARMONY, REASSURANCE AND SKILL – RN LOVES MANAGEMENT NICHE
story and photo by James Coburn, Staff Writer
Chase Ellis, RN, has a long history with Oklahoma Center for Orthopedic & Multi-Specialty Surgery, LLC.
Ellis serves as the north surgical services manager of OCOM North, located in Oklahoma City. Another OCOM serves the south side of Oklahoma City, located on Walker Avenue.
“I’ve been with OCOM for 14 years. I started out as a scrub tech,” said Ellis, who in 2015 earned his nursing degree at Oklahoma City Community College. “I went to nursing school while I was scrubbing and have been here ever since. I like it here because it feels more like family than a big giant hospital with hundreds of employees. We’re smaller and closer-knit.” (story continues below)
Clinical Research Nurse – Targeted salary at $60,500 – OU HEALTH SCIENCES CENTER
Ellis feels he can provide a little bit better patient care in a smaller hospital, he said. OCOM North provides outpatient surgery with a lot of emphasis on orthopedics, pain management, and podiatry. He repeatedly hears from patients about how accommodating the nursing staff is and how they make the process easy.
Most patients enter OCOM North feeling wound-up, anxious, and tight about having surgery. It’s always reassuring for Ellis to listen to patients telling him the OCOM North staff was a calming influence and helps them get through surgery without having extra anxiety exacerbating their concerns.
“I usually just try to reassure them that I understand they are nervous. Everybody gets nervous. It’s a natural human response. But we’re going to do the best that we can to take care of you to the best of our abilities.”
It helps people who are nervous build confidence to know they are cared for by a highly trained staff with a high acuity of experience with excellent outcomes.
Ellis commends the nursing staff’s cooperative team spirit of working together to benefit patient care with best practices and a harmonious environment between themselves.
“We work towards our common goal without thinking about self. We have things to do and we’re all going to do it until it’s done,” Ellis said. “Everybody is looking out for each other.”
His interest in the medical field was instilled in him as a boy. He enjoyed his work as a scrub-tech but wanted a more advanced experience with more involvement in patient care. Now he does a lot of scheduling coordination as the surgical services manager. The weekly staffing flow is made as efficient as possible by Ellis. Nurses don’t have a lot of idle time at OCOM North where an average of 50-75 surgery cases happen weekly. About 13-15 nurses care for patients at any given time.
Ellis is responsible for the staffing of pre-operations and the operating room. He said OCOM North has been fortunate to avoid staffing shortages during the ongoing nationwide lack of registered nurses. There has been little turnover during the nursing shortage.
“We’ve had a consistent staff level,” Ellis continued. “A lot of our staff have been here for multiple years. We have a couple of new faces from time-to-time, but the majority of our staff has been here over a year.”
People get along. They arrive at work to do their job and get to go home to their families with a good work/life balance, he explained.
Nursing qualities involve self-motivation because OCOM prefers not having to micro-manage its nursing staff. So, whatever is accomplished in a day depends on how that self-motivation shines.
“Efficiency is the name of the game here for us,” he explained. “For a surgery center, we’re trying to be efficient with our time and our patients.”
Ellis will work in the operating room to bridge gaps when nurses are on vacation. But the OR is home for Ellis and where he loves to be.
“I love it because I go home knowing we’ve helped people today. I didn’t just sit in a cubicle somewhere and throw a bunch of ones and zeros around,” he said. “We helped people that were having real problems.”
Ellis’s nursing career has broadened his perspective about life. He has become more detail oriented. He learned early as a scrub tech circulating in the OR, that if the small details are not right, the larger details will become a miss.
“So, it’s taught me to be focused and more detail oriented in my daily life, too,” he said.
He and his wife have a lot of fun with their two young boys by riding bicycles together. Ellis enjoys playing golf. And the family enjoys going to a lake, especially during cooler fall weather.
“My wife and I grew up enjoying going to the lake, so we continued that when starting a family.”
Visit Orthopedic & Multi-Specialty Surgery, LLC. HERE.
