Med/Surg to Medicine floor

[Dakeirus]

I've been working for almost a year in a med/surg floor. I plan on applying to work at a different hospital (but same name/company) in one of their purely medicine units.

I've been trying to come up with a response if asked, "Why do you want to leave your current position?", but all I've found are generic answers like "I'm looking for better opportunities." It's harder for me to answer because I want to go to a unit which requires (almost) the same skill sets.

Would it be acceptable to say something like "I believe that I could learn more from medicine patients because I've found that taking care of post-op patients to be a little predictable now"? But then say something like "That's not to say that I know everything about taking care of surgical patients because everyday is a learning experience for me," so I do not sound overly arrogant or confident? Or is this kind of response not good at all?

The truth is my unit has become very stressful for me. Some of the patients we get are so ill they probably belong to a step-down icu unit. They refuse to staff us based on acuity and instead, based on numbers, which at one point resulted to one of us taking care of 2 vent patients with 6 other patients. A lot of times we only get 2 nursing attendants for a floor with 30 patients which at any point are multiple total cares.

[martymoose, BSN, RN]

I hate to say it, but our medical pts are some of the heaviest. If it's the same company, I doubt the ratio's will be any different.

Not sure how you'd be making an improvement.

Anyway you could shadow first to see that you are not jumping from the frying pan into the fire?

[Dakeirus]

Thanks for the response. Actually, this other place is the main hospital and is of a different union, which has a contract for a 6:1 ratio that they actually honor. I've done my last clinical (about 9 12hr shifts) when I was in school over there in one of their medicine units, so I have an idea of what kind of patients they get. I always get told by coworkers that they dump/transfer their heavy medicine patients to where I am now.