My Reasons For Avoiding The Acute Care Hospital - page 6

Around here, public health is the position to covet. One usually has to have years of seniority to get into it. In nursing school our entire program was geared toward community nursing. Public health nurses are also on a higher pay scale than other nurses. We got the distinct feeling that while we would have to do our time in acute, if we really wanted to be on the forefront of nursing we should go into community as soon as possible.

That said, new nurses are usually encouraged to start in acute, if not to stay there. The prevailing logic is that with a couple of years of acute experience, a young nurse has more options because she has a skill base on which to draw that she wouldn't if she only worked LTC. And I certainly saw the reality of that in the LTC facility I worked in. RNs basically do nothing but paper work and a number of them were afraid to work elsewhere because they felt their lack of skills. Some pick up shifts in acute just to keep skills current. So it's more about taking advantage of options rather than saying this type of nursing is superior. I do know there is a real distaste for LTC in general however.

Agreed that the non-stop parade of other disciplines, families etc is the worst thing about working acute, however working nights on a less acute unit helps with some of the issues. That said, I've been told many times that nursing in general is completely unsuited to my personality (I come up in myers-briggs as an INTP--all the career advice says the worst job an INTP could do is caregiving--a list of all the things INTPs are utter crap at basically describes nursing). All through nursing school I was struck by the fact that people like me should not be nurses. But it turns out doing things I'm not naturally good at has been an incredibly valuable growing experience. And that's the other side of things, it is possible to learn a lot by doing the things that are uncomfortable and don't come easily.

That said, the field I would never work in is psych. I hated that with every fibre of my being and was lucky to even pass the clinical. It was my lowest mark in nursing school. I think it's great that some nurses love psych however because it means I don't have to ever work there ever.