Finding my niche

[Harlsiess]

I am a RN currently working on an acute surgical unit in a large teaching hospital (been there for a little over a year), I also have previous 7 months experience on an orthopedic unit and a few months experience in a nursing home. I LOVE being a nurse despite the stress and I am still working on my time management which has greatly improved over the years. On my unit we get orthopedic overflow, a lot of basic lap appy's and choles, SBO's, mastectomy's, OMFS pts, gastric bypass patients, plastic surgeries (mainly flap) pts and some medicine pts. My unit has a high turnover we usualy don't have pts for more than 4 days besides the select few that end up staying while. I like my unit and am definitely comfortable there. I want to move to a higher level of care to learn more but I am so unsure of where to go... I think I would like to move to a unit with at little more Continuity of care because I love getting to know my patients and being able to talk with them. I am more familiar wth surgical patients and am comfortable with them. I like medicine patients too we just don't get them as often. I've floated to the ED before and I don't think I would like that. And Ive floated to PACU which was cool but also not much of continuity of care. Ive floated to surgical oncology (critical care stepdown unit) I liked it but I could only take regular floor beds so i guess I didn't get much of a feel for it. My main question is how do I find my niche and what I really like ? And any suggestions on where to go? I have a very positive personality (some coworkers on my unit actually call me a fairy), I'm extremely caring and understanding, I like to take time to focus on my patients (which is hard on my unit because we can get up to 6 patients and the turnover is high), I can move quick and I do like to learn, I haven't had very many rapid responses so I get a little shaky in those situations but I am able to handle them, I'm good with IV's and blood draws, I love wound dressings. I've considered possibly moving to BMT or CTICU-stepdown but I am so unsure of where to go! Any suggestions ? Sorry for the long rant. Any advice or descriptions of your units would be much appreciated.

[brownbook]

Very generally speaking most patients do not stay in acute care hospitals a long enough time so that you would get to know them, talk with them, and be more involved or responsible for their continuity of care.

My first thought for the type of nursing you are interested in is hospice or palliative care nursing.

[Harlsiess]

I know they don't, I just meant longer than my specific unit. We get pts that are comfort care etc and I don't think I would like that really. I don't need to have a patient for months but thats why I was considering BMT because I know you have those patients for longer than 2 days. Thank you :)