Different levels of nursing? - Page 2

Why do you think you want to be a nurse?I could say I want to teach kindergarten but not have to deal with little kids.

OP- what is it you think nurses do?

Heh, excellent post.

At least you're honest. I can respect honesty.

I can't tell you which specialties have the least body fluids involved: most specialties have the potential for them. I have to say I don't see anywhere as much of body fluids in psych as I would have in med/surg or ED...then again, when I do get to see body fluids in psych, I REALLY get to see them. Detox, of course: loads of vomiting, infected injection sites and other stuff...and then a few of the psychotic patients get, shall we say, creative But the latter isn't too common, thank goodness.

I imagine your chances of running across body fluids are lower in community settings, administration, informatics and settings generally away from the bedside. But unless you're lucky to land one of these jobs right out of the gate, you'll have to put in your time for a few years at the bedside first.

There's a lot more areas to nursing than you think. If you want to see what nurses do, wander throughout the forum. If you're curious about a particular specialty, we have sub-forums for almost all specialties.

One thing to keep in mind though...it may seem like you're running across a lot of venting/downer threads. Well, that's because a lot of members come here to vent. That doesn't mean there's anything good in nursing because there are a lot of great things...but sometimes it's more cathartic to vent in a safe place (read: here) about nursing than to sing its praises. Keep that in mind.

Good luck whatever you decide to do.

Well you've asked 2 different questions here.

Where would someone work if they don't want to work in a hospital? There are infinite possibilities... doctor's offices, outpatient surgery centers, schools, jails, home health.

Where would you work if you don't want to work with bodily fluids? There are several threads about this but if you don't want to work with bodily fluids, I would say you should really consider whether you want to be a nurse. Nurses work with bodily fluids- period.

If you work in a doctor's office, you'll be doing U/As, stool guiaics, possibly throat cultures, possibly finger sticks/lab draws (depending on the office) and if a mom comes in with a vomiting kid, you'll have to deal with that too. And there may be patients who have tracheostomies and you could have to do sputum cultures and the like on them. You'd have to do this on patients with patent airways during the winter months, too. If you work in outpatient surgery, well post-op patients vomit. If you work in a jail, you never know what will happen.

The only nursing occupations I could think of that don't involve bodily fluids are things like management that do not involve patient care. But you need actual nursing experience before you can do that.

Or, those of us who are nurses and like our profession realize that dealing with bodily fluids is a necessary part of the job and we don't think twice about it because it's a small part of what we do. I've been projectile vomited on before and what did I do? I cleaned it off, cleaned the patient and went on with my day.

I really don't think you want to be a nurse.Maybe a receptionist?

Bodily fluids are part of a nurse's work. There are nursing jobs where there are zero exposure to bodily fluids (management, research...basically anything that's not bedside care), but you need the bedside experience for those jobs. Nobody LOVES being puked on, or cleaning up stool at 3 in the morning, but we do it and move on. It's part of what nurses do, and we do it with pride.

Maybe you need to rethink nursing as a possible career path for you.

If you don't want to deal with bodily fluids you probably don't want to be a nurse, a teacher or a parent.