OR Terms to Know Before Your First CRNA Shadow Day

Updated August 2026

Your first time in an operating room feels like landing somewhere everyone speaks a language you don't. People are calling for drugs by nickname, rattling off abbreviations, and moving fast. If you've never heard any of it, you spend the day nodding.

You don't need to know everything before a CRNA shadow day. But knowing maybe twenty terms is the difference between watching and following. And it changes the questions you're able to ask, which is what the CRNA actually notices.

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Terms to Know

The full glossary: OR terms, the abbreviations you will hear dozens of times a day, drug names, and the equipment and monitors in every anesthetizing location.

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What are the basic OR terms?

• Induction. Putting the patient to sleep at the start of the case. IV medications, ventilation, securing the airway.
• Emergence. The opposite. Anesthetic agents come down, the patient resumes breathing on their own, and they wake up.
• Intubation. Placing an endotracheal tube through the mouth into the trachea to secure the airway.
• Extubation. Removing that tube, usually at emergence once the patient can protect their own airway.
• Laryngoscopy. Using a lighted blade to see the vocal cords for intubation. You'll hear "direct" for a traditional blade and "video" for a camera-assisted one like a GlideScope.
• Preop. Where patients get prepared before surgery. The anesthesia provider interviews them, starts the IV, and reviews the plan.
• PACU. Post-Anesthesia Care Unit. The recovery room.
• NPO. Nothing by mouth. Current ASA guidelines are 2 hours for clear liquids, 6 to 8 for solids, to reduce aspiration risk.
• MAC. Monitored Anesthesia Care. Sedation without full general anesthesia, and the provider can convert to general if the case demands it.
• Regional. Numbing one region with a nerve block, spinal, or epidural instead of putting the patient fully under.

What abbreviations will you hear in the OR?

When should you ask questions during a shadow day?

Induction is the most interesting thing you'll watch all day. It's also the worst possible time to talk.

The provider's entire attention is on the airway and the patient's vitals. Stay quiet, stay out of the way, watch. Once the airway is secured and the case settles into maintenance, that's your window. Same at emergence: wait until the patient is out of the room.

If you're unsure whether it's a good moment, it isn't. Write the question down and ask it later, which is exactly why you brought a notebook in your scrub pocket.

Our Final Thoughts

Learn these twenty terms and you'll follow probably eighty percent of what happens in the room. That's enough to ask a real question instead of a generic one, and real questions are what get you remembered when you need a letter later.