Mary Rivera
Mary Rivera is a seasoned perioperative services professional with a remarkable 40-year career in nursing and surgical operations. She began her journey with a Bachelor of Arts in English from San Francisco State University and initially worked as a surgery scheduler in her hometown of San Francisco. Seeking to be more directly involved in patient care, she pursued a nursing degree at El Camino College in Los Angeles at the age of 30, eventually becoming a CNOR-certified nurse and developing deep expertise in perioperative management, including complex procedures like liver and heart transplants.
Over the years, Mary has held leadership roles such as Director of Perioperative Services at USC and other hospitals, guiding teams through operational transformations, including converting facilities from paper to electronic health records. She has earned proficiency certification in Epic and leveraged her organizational expertise to support perioperative infrastructure across multiple institutions. Currently, she works part-time at Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital and Martin Luther King Hospital in Compton as an educator, training ICU, ED, and med-surg nurses transitioning into the OR, while also facilitating specialized AORN programs alongside her partner.
In addition to her hospital work, Mary has contributed to Yellow Brick Consulting for the past 15 years, helping hospitals nationwide design, build, and open new facilities, including major projects at Stanford, University of Pennsylvania, Kimmel Pavilion in New York, Loma Linda, and Scripps San Diego. She has combined her nursing and English backgrounds by publishing articles in professional journals, including a cover story on scalp replantation for AORN Journal, and has participated in medical missions with Operation Smile in Kenya, Brazil, and Morocco. Her career reflects a commitment to patient care, mentorship, and advancing perioperative nursing practices on both a local and global scale.
• Epic Proficiency Certification
• El Camino College & SF State University- A.A.
• Epic-EHR
• San Francisco State University- B.A.
• Runner-up for Nurse Mentor of the Year
• AORN (Association of Operating Room Nurses)
• Wilson Summit Condominium
• Eucharistic Minister at Church in South Pasadena
• Food Bank Volunteer
What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
There is a huge nursing shortage, especially with the aging baby boomer population, and we simply don't have enough nurses. The average age of operating room nurses right now is around 50-55 years old, and when COVID happened, we had a mass exodus of nurses who said they didn't want to do this anymore because it was too much for their health and safety. If we're never filling the pool back up with new nurses, it's never going to work. In perioperative services particularly, because it's a specialty area like ICU or ED, you have to have special training to work in the OR. The problem is there are very few training courses out there for nurses who want to become surgical nurses - you can't just walk in and become an OR nurse, you have to be trained. That's why education is so important to me right now. We need people to go into nursing and know what a wonderful profession it is, for both male and female nurses. If you're the type of person who enjoys giving to others, it's such a great profession with so many different avenues - you can work in ICU, geriatrics, operating room, recovery room, part-time, full-time, days, nights. There are just a million avenues for what you might want to do, and you're always going to be able to have a job.
What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Patient safety is my number one priority in everything that we do. Patients come into the operating room and they're asleep - we are their voice, we are the ones who speak for them. After my own serious accident about a year ago when my car ran over my leg in a church parking lot, I ended up with such a better appreciation for life and what can happen in just a second. That accident could have gone over my neck or my abdomen, and I would not be here talking today. I lived, I walk, I'm fine, and while I have a horrible scar on my leg, I don't really care because nobody's looking at my legs. You just don't know what life holds for you, and I now have such a better appreciation for my life because of that horrible accident. I'm very active in my church - I spent 12 years in Catholic school and I'm a Eucharistic minister at my church in South Pasadena. I'm very dedicated to the church and do volunteer work like working at the food bank. For me, it's really less about personal recognition and more about getting the word out about nursing and education, and knowing that no matter how old you are when you start, you can still have a wonderful career. I'm passionate about mentoring and giving back - that's what's most important to me at this stage of my life.