Opening Day On a crisp Monday morning in October, an eighteen year old male scheduled for an open osteochondral allograft

was the very first patient to walk through the doors of Connecticut Childrens Medical Centers new Ambulatory Surgical Center (ASC) in Farmington. Last year, Connecticut Childrens performed over 10,500 surgeries in its main hospital, which has eight OR rooms, a cardiac cath lab, and 12 PACU bays. Connecticut Childrens built the ASC in order to continue to meet the increasing demand for pediatric surgical services here in Connecticut. In December 2012, I started collaborating with the OR educator and perioperative nursing director to create and implement an orientation program for newly-hired nurses and surgical techs to the ASC. Nurses would be oriented and cross trained in all aspects of perioperative nursing: the pre- and postanesthesia care units, operating room, Child Life, and central sterile. We were challenged to complete this nursing orientation in less than six months, compared to the more typical 9-12 month orientation for a perioperative nurse at the hospitals main campus. In order to develop the orientation program, it was first necessary to determine what procedures and types of patients would be cared for at the ASC. The ASC would care for patients over the age of one with an ASA classification of I or II. Surgical procedures would be limited to non-complex general, urology, otolaryngology, and sports medicine cases. Frequent changes regarding the types of procedures to be performed created challenges in the development of the program. More specifically, it would be important to orient nurses only to the procedures to be performed at the Surgical Center. Eleven nurses were hired with a strong mix of talents and experiences, including OR, PACU, emergency department, neuro-trauma, and medical-surgical. These nurses oriented at the main campus and learned a great deal from our expert staff. The entire perioperative department took great pride in teaching our orientees the skills and critical thinking necessary to provide high quality and collaborative care for our patients in a family-centered manner. This past September, the building of the new 18,000 square foot Ambulatory Surgical Center was completed. Once the nurses finishedtheir orientations, they were given the unique opportunity to unpack and make this building their home. For several weeks leading up to the first patient case, we ran countless drills and mock codes to help the entire staff gain comfort with their physical space, resources, and those processes that are different from the main hospitals.We are currently running two operating rooms with ten PACU bays. The ASC has the capacity to expand this to four operating rooms in the future. In our first year of operations, the Surgical Center will care for approximately 2,000 surgical cases, and we are looking forward to our role in making Connecticut's children the healthiest in the country. Amy Korber, MSN, RN Perianesthesia Clinical Education Specialist Connecticut Childrens Medical Center