Perioperative nurses are another of our nurse specialties and they’re the ones you see in House, General Hospital and Grey’s Anatomy standing around the operating theatre in their scrubs. As this type of nurse you’ll aid the doctors by selecting and passing on instruments, dealing with swabs (yes, even wiping the sweating brow of the surgeon as the plot moves it its important moment) and doing some of the stitching (technically, suturing) of incisions and so on.

The training is of course the same as for all of the different specialties of registered nurse: one of the three ways to taking the license exam. A full four year college degree, a two year college degree or a one year diploma program. Those who take the latter two often later take a conversion program as it is those with the full college degree who get all of the promotions and the interesting jobs.

Perioperative nursing is slightly strange in relation to our EQSQ personality tests. You see, you never actually get to meet any patients. Or, rather, you may well end up arms deep in the bowels of a patient, but you’re most unlikely to meet them when they’re conscious, and thus obviously a human being. So this is a variation of nursing where you really don’t need as much of the female brain as with most others, indeed, if you want to get into the medical field but know that you have a male or systemizing brain type, this may well be the specialty for you.

There’s also another closely related job, surgical assistant, and I’ve heard that the percentage of men in both is much higher than it is throughout nursing in general: which rather makes out point about the systemizing requirements.