What are the stress level ranking for these units?

[Humaneclowninscrubs]

Can someone please rank the stress level of these units for me?

I think Ortho would be the least stressful, but here are the units

1.Orthopedics

2. Telemetry connected to trauma with helicopter pad (sounds stressful already LOL)

3. Cardiovascular Surgery

4. NeuroICU

Ortho will pay about $2 less than all the others. I bet it is less of a headache too. I don't care a whole lot about the rate of pay since I would like to start out on a unit I can build without quitting.

So can someone rank these in order of least to most stressful?

[TheGooch]

All the cervical fusions must be checked q2h for tracheal shift, difficulty breathing/swallowing...I give a lot of blood on my unit.

Really? When I had a 2 level ACDF a few years back I got out of surgery around 3:30 and was basically ignored the first night I was there. No one came in to check and see if I had any difficulty breathing or swallowing. Your hospital sounds like a good one.

[nurseprnRN, BSN, RN]

In a period of overstaffing (yes, Virginia, once upon a time, we could be overstaffed) my manager offered any of us a chance to go to another unit, any unit, for six weeks. I chose the NICU, because it scared the pants offa me and I thought if I booked myself in without a chance to escape I'd learn something and overcome my fears. Well, the first thing I learned was that the NICU nurses were scared to death of the perfectly wonderful, well-run, and nurse-empowered cardiothoracic surgery ICU I was from. Adults, big adults, with open heart surgery and big tubes and stuff terrified them. They thought we were in a constant state of high alert and dealing with cardiac arrests all the time (we hadn't had a code in our unit for about three months at that point-- we were supposed to prevent that stuff, ya know, and we were pretty good at heading it off).

And yet these same people would get these teeny little critically ill babies with NO NOTICE AT ALL from the del room-- as in, "Come over here right now and get this baby!", babies who would pop pneumos and die in front of you in two minutes if you didn't recognize it and act, babies who would have wildly unstable physiologies all the time, and they were as cool as a cucumber about it.

I always told my students to ask every nurse why s/he did what s/he did, and also why s/he didn't do what s/he didn't do. Lots of people can tell you why they like something, but it's when they tell you why they don't like something that you can make a decision. Also realize that you will be exposed to many different kinds of nursing in your education, and most people end up doing something entirely different than they envisioned when they applied. Everyone finds a comfort zone somewhere eventually. But none of us is comfortable everywhere, and there is no absolute "most stressful" scale.

Examples:

"Mother-baby nursing! I love it! What better opportunity to get a new family off to a good start-- a good birthing experience, establish breastfeeding, and all that. And when a new family has a good birth experience, they'll come back to our hospital for care later on in life."

"Mother-baby nursing, yeeeeecccchhhh! Tits and fundi and peripads and screaming brats and if I never see another whiny entitled ***** with a six-page birth plan and a mother-in-law it'll be too damn soon."

[mmc51264, BSN, MSN, RN]

,

is there a lot of post-op blood products being given on an ortho unit?

Yes we tranfuse blood quite often. We also may have a pt on a regional, PCA and sometimes ketamine drips. We have insulin drips and heparin drips. Usually, if I get a pt with a high acuity, I will have one less pt.

[Libby1987]

I had a home health patient come home with a J tube for TPN, a PICC and a Foley. His daughter, a seasoned NICU nurse has been my all time most difficult caregiver to teach. "OMG you flush with 5cc heparin??!! We would never flush that amount!!!" I'm thinking she handles 2 lb patients, what's scarier than that? She never did relax.

Ill take a mechanic anyway, those guys are the easiest to teach.

(Sorry, this really wasn't on topic :-) )

[K+MgSO4, BSN]

I know I just discharged a man with a Foley in, with community nursing supports and education to the pt and his wife. However his daughter a seasoned ICU nurse has taken 5 WEEKS of carers leave (Australia so decent leave accrual). However when her NUM contacted me to confirm if this was required I had to tell her of course not!!! Simply this seasoned ICU nurse was out of her comfort zone.

[fmxkrazyone]

I work on a neuro RNF and based on what we send to ICU and stepdown and what we receive from them, neuro is no joke, it's stressful, a neuro assessment can change in seconds and when it happens to multiple pts at the same time it's crazy. All floors are stressful, just depends on what's going on and how you handle it and what kind of support you have. I'm lucky to work on a very supportive unit, I couldn't handle it without my fellow nurses and aides.