Your Specialty: Do You Have Regrets?

[Weeping Willow]

Do you have any regrets about the specialty you have chosen?

Have you worked in other specialties before your current one?

Do you plan to stay in your present one and for how long?

No, I'm not a student, although this would be a good survey, perhaps, for a student. I am in Ambulatory Care/Public Health, have done a couple of others, and I plan to stay in my present care for the known future. Good hours, good benefits, pay is low but no weekends or holidays or off shifts. I regret not having experience in critical care and other hospital areas besides MedSurg. Please feel free to say what you like best and least about your area.

[Purple_Scrubs, BSN, RN]

I love school nursing! My only regret is that I sometimes wish I would have kept a foot in the door PRN at the hospital, just in case the districts ever decide to give RNs the axe. But, if that were to happen I think Public Health nursing would be more my style anyway. Hopefully before that would happen I would have a Master's anyway to open up more avenues for me.

I have absolutely no regrets regarding the specialty itself.

[caliotter3]

First sentence of OP says "specialty you have chosen". In many cases it is not a matter of choice, but the specialty where one has been offered employment. It would have been great if I could have got a job in acute care or any other specialty I had an interest in, but long term care and home health provided me with work, so that is where I have spent my nursing "career". I feel it is better termed a "career" when the individual has choice in where they spend their time working.

[PsychRN98, ASN]

I went to psych right out of school and mostly loved it..did it for 10 yrs. Then I got burned out from nursing altogether, but not the patients I was working with, more the politics of nursing. Now I'm going back to school for Health Information Technology/Health Information Mgmt and eventually Informatics.

Do I have any regrets? Yes, I wish I would have had the confidence to do something a little more medical, that I had done some basic med/surg type nursing here and there, for skills upkeep. Other than that, no, psych was incredible and will always be my heart. I love my psych patients...all of 'em!

[emtb2rn, BSN, RN, EMT-B]

I've been in the ER for 3 years. I originally thought I would start in telemetry, get exerpience, then move to the ER. Fortunately, my telemetry interview ended with the NM saying "you have emergency written all over you, why would I hire you so you can leave?" So, straight to the ER.

Regrets: on one hand, I wish I had gotten into nursing sooner as I'm really having a lot of fun, but on the other hand, I'm glad I had my corporate career as that has given me a big toolbox of management skills that I can use down the road if I so choose. Buyout with an early retirement package didn't hurt either.

[mama_d, BSN, RN]

I agree with whoever said that often times we don't necessarily get to pick our specialty.

That said, I've been working tele for over seven years, with oncology thrown in as well for about the last five. I enjoy it, but doubt that I'll finish my career out there. I'd love to get several years worth of ICU, ED, and PICU or NICU in somewhere. However, I also want to be a NP, probably FNP, and work in an office eventually. My knees and back ain't gonna last another 40 years, so I'm planning on being away from the bedside (except for perhaps PRN to keep skills up) before I have to start getting parts replaced or fused or whatever they'll come up with by then.