The first time Kate Rogers scrubbed in as an OR nurse, she watched the surgeon reach to make an incision on the patient’s left side. “Gee, doctor, are you sure?” Rogers piped up. The team stopped and looked at the films. Sure enough, the incision needed to be on the other side.

That happened years ago, during an era when surgeons were “godlike,” says Rogers, 61, RN, BSN, MSN, CNOR. “Nurses stood up when they came into the room.” But she trusted her training and intuition. “If I was going to be wrong, I was wrong,” she says. “But it was one of the most important questions I needed to ask.”

It’s a lesson that has served her well during a 40-year nursing career that has spanned everything from swabbing the OR floor to overseeing 55 operating rooms performing 37,000 procedures annually.

Rogers, who retired in March as the administrative director of surgical services at Swedish Medical Center in Seattle, started as a teenage volunteer at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. When she finished high school, she worked there as a nurse’s assistant. Assigned to the OR, she washed instruments, mopped, and organized supplies.

“Seeing the anesthesiologist, surgeon, and nursing staff care for patients at such a critical time in their lives, I absolutely wanted to be part of that team forever,” she says. “When patients come in for surgery, whether it’s a small procedure or big, we take away all the control, their clothes, their family, almost their identity, and put them to sleep.”

OR nurses, Rogers says, have just a few minutes before the anesthesia takes effect to establish a critical relationship with a patient. “Being able to do that, getting expert and intuitive enough to identify potential problems, that to me was the epitome of being a patient advocate.”

Rogers moved to Seattle as a single mom in 1978 with a two-year nursing degree. She went back to school — first for her BSN, then her master’s degree in nursing administration — to provide for her two daughters and challenge herself professionally. It wasn’t always easy, she says. “I was gone from home so much, my youngest said one day, ‘Mommy, I forgot what color hair you had.’ I just sobbed.” But her passion for nursing never dimmed. “Nursing has always given back to me,” she says.

Rogers has worked to educate others about OR management and recruit nurses into the specialty. “The operating room is very much a closed door environment,” she says. “There’s so much mystery about what goes on back there.”

On television, the OR often is the place with “the crabby surgeon is throwing things or romances are going on, neither of which happens,” Rogers says. “It’s all about how the team takes care of the patient.”

Dr. Michael Hart, a surgeon at Swedish Medical Center, first met Rogers in 1979 when she was his scrub nurse on a complex case. “I was phenomenally impressed with how hard working, diligent and dedicated she was,” he says.

Debbie Smith, RN, an orthopedic surgery charge nurse at Swedish Medical Center, who worked for Rogers, agreed. “Kate is so connected to every single facet of OR nursing, because she’s done every single facet. She’s one of us.”

In March, capping her career, Rogers was presented with the outstanding nursing management achievement award from the National Association of Perioperative Registered Nurses.

For Rogers, retirement hardly means being inactive. An avid biker, hiker, and rower, Rogers has ridden 206 miles in a day, hiked to the base camp of Mount Everest, and traversed the Inca Trail in Peru. If she can find time in between teaching tai chi, yoga, pilates, and spinning at her daughter’s fitness studio in Bellevue, and going to Mount Kilimanjaro or Patagonia next year, she also plans on continuing to speak and consult on OR management.

Over nearly four decades, Rogers has seen big changes in the OR, in particular the move to minimally invasive surgery. “Now it’s little tiny incisions and using robots.” Technology means less pain and faster recovery for the patients, Rogers says. But for nurses, “It’s more difficult. The nurse has to become technically proficient.”

For Rogers that kind of challenge can be a positive force. Her advice to young nurses? “Stay patient-focused, and continue learning. There are so many opportunities.”