By Matt Skoufalos
Seeking a change of pace and a change in the weather, Gaylene Chartier left California for Colorado in 1990 and ended up staying for a decade. Five years after relocating, she began a surgical technician program at Denver Community College, worked as a tech through nursing school, and immediately joined the operating room at Longmont Community Hospital upon graduation.
Chartier spent the remainder of her time in Colorado at Poudre Valley in Fort Collins, but by 2000, was planning a return to California. In the course of traveling there for a job interview, she met her future husband, Chris, on a plane ride.
“We went out to lunch, and both said we couldn’t get involved because we were moving to California — and ended up living three miles apart,” Chartier said. “After two years, we were living together.”
The couple ultimately settled in Cave Creek, Arizona, in 2003. In 2009, Chartier joined the HonorHealth Piper Surgery Center in Scottsdale, where she works to this day. She also continued her education, earning a bachelor’s degree in nursing from Grand Canyon University in 2010, and completing her MSN in 2014.
“I did it and kept on going,” Chartier said. “It was hard working full-time at the same time, 40 hours a week. I’d get up in the morning, get on the computer, come home from work, and I’d be in there for two hours. It was hard, but I don’t regret doing it. The days were long, but it pays off.”
In 2014, Chartier leveraged her advanced degrees into a teaching position at Scottsdale Community College. She also began working as a legal consultant on nursing issues and has enjoyed a steady stream of referrals since. Not only does Chartier find the work intellectually compelling, but it informs her work as a perioperative clinical educator, which includes responsibilities in the OR, pre-op, PACU, endoscopy, and laser safety,
“I really enjoy reviewing the cases, seeing what goes on, and sharing some of that information with the new people that I train,” Chartier said. “This stuff can really happen. You need to be attentive and follow the rules and the policies.”
Today, Chartier splits her time as a perioperative OR nurse at the Honor Health Shea campus, as well as teaching Block One nursing students at Scottsdale Community College.
In an era where many surgical environments are challenged consistently to maintain their staffing levels, Chartier said facilities are still searching for ways to get more nurses to enter the field. She believes the profession is still reeling from the impact of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic: an exodus of retirees and a dearth of new entrants.
“A lot of nurses that I know of worked during COVID, and were either close to retirement or said, ‘I’m not going through this again,’ and left the field,” Chartier said. “That has an impact on potential nurses going into the field. They know it was awful because we cancelled so many surgeries, nurses were working long shifts, people were dying in the hospital, and their family couldn’t visit. I can understand the impact that it had on them, and not wanting to go through that again.”
Amid the million-nurse post-COVID shortage, Chartier points out that nursing graduates aren’t pursuing the OR as frequently as they might be training to become physician assistants or nurse practitioners. Those who do want to enter the operating room are required to complete a perioperative 101 program, which she has taught through the Association of Perioperative Registered Nurses (AORN).
The Periop 101 program provides critical workforce training for new graduates or seasoned nurses alike before they head into the OR. Over the course of some six to eight months, students learn through the professional organization all the things they once would have been taught by a charge nurse or shift lead.
“When I started, a nurse just trained you,” Chartier said. “Nursing has changed. We have a lot more rules and regulations as far as Medicare, Medicaid, insurance policies, government policies. We have a lot more equipment now than we used to have; new technologies, treatments, new programs.
“There’s a lot of training involved in that – prepping, wound care, medication safety, sterile technique, anesthesia – that covers the whole gamut of being an OR nurse,” she said. “If anybody does that program, then you know they’re trained in a certain way.”
Chartier noted, too, the strides the nursing profession is making to transform itself from an industry that commonly was understood to be harshest on new recruits into an institution that doesn’t tolerate bullying and mandates training to identify it. Maintenance of a harassment-free workplace is as critically connected to staff retention as proper orientation is, she said.
“Coming into nursing, it’s not about you, it’s about your patients. You need to do what you do with passion and be humble,” Chartier said. “You will make mistakes, and people will correct you. Feedback is an opportunity to grow.”
At the same time, offering criticism with an eye for growth is distinct from creating a hostile environment on the job. Chartier said that many nurses who leave the field in the first year will do so either because they’ve been bullied or they weren’t properly oriented before beginning their roles.
“People recognize that [a nurse] will leave the field or that department because of it,” she said. “It’s very expensive to train a new nurse, be they a new grad, or new to your unit, so it’s worth the investment to train people on not being bullied; to speak up and say, ‘That’s not right,’ and call it what it is.”
Chartier herself is an advocate for the great variety of opportunities in nursing, be they in educational settings, professional offices or hospital assignments. That opportunity, and the variety of ways in which to seek it, underscore some of what she most loves about the field.
“You may not get the shift you like initially, but you can get a job, and you are always employable,” Chartier said. “You can just do so much – work per diem, be a travel nurse, go to different states, different areas. There are so many options you can work in, and pick your schedule.”
Away from her responsibilities as a nurse, educator and legal expert, Chartier enjoys traveling, especially when given the opportunity to do wildlife photography, either domestically – like her road trips from the southwest to Montana, Wyoming and Colorado – or abroad. Chartier went on an African safari with her husband in June 2024, and she plans to visit the Galapagos and the South Pacific in the future.
“I’ve been to Patagonia, Antarctica, Macchu Pichu, and so many on the list!” Chartier said. “There’s so many places in this world that we need to see.”
Her advice: “Just go. You don’t know what’s going to happen.”
Professional Spotlight Nomination
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