Where would your least favorite area to work be?

I can't do oncology. I've dealt with enough cancer in my family, I don't want to deal with it at work. I especially want to avoid pediatric oncology. I can't deal with dying children. My pedi rotation was in an LTC facility for cognitively-impaired children. it was heartbreaking.

I hated ortho because I was afraid I would somehow "break" my patient.

OB/L&D - I hate that stuff! It's the same thing over and over and over! Booooooooooooooooring!

Lots of these seem sad, but Med-Surg.
I would pass out will too much blood showing....yuck!

I picked Peds but really I want to avoid all children.

There something just unnatural and horribly depressing about dying children, burned children, sick children...

Ugh...

Ditto! Although the infants are ok in short spurts, when they are cute instead of crying.

I also dislike Ortho patients.

I would not like L & D because as a mother of four healthy children there is no way i could feel anything but guilt and dispair toward the parents of a sick or stillborn baby! For all you L&D nurses---bravo!


Now on the other hand i would love nothing more than to be a psych nurse---i live not too far away from a state hospital where it is a dream of mine to work there some day---unfortunately i was told they only hire RN's--and right now i am a LPN student and also working on my RN pre-req's and know realistically I will not be able to finish my RN for quite awhile due to Im the only "bread winner" in my house. But by the looks of everyone elses comments on psych comments--i won't be trampled over by competition once i do get my RN!!

A med/surg nurse I once knew said that when she was doing her OB rotations, her non-nursing friends all said, "That must be really fun!" She replied that she had never been peed on, pooped on, or barfed on quite as much as she did in that newborn nursery, and every boy who passed through there must have said, in newborn code, "Hey, you! That nurse doesn't like babies very much! FWEEEEEEEE!" and sprayed her.

If I was a nurse, the thing that would bother me the most (IMHO) would be birth defects, especially those that weren't detected before the baby was born. I can look at pictures of just about anything except neural tube defects.



I have a 9-year-old niece who is very bright and wants to be a doctor. This sprout reads medical books for fun (I did the same thing at her age, and in fact still do!) There are lots of things we're going to let her find out on her own, and one of them is something a resident told me about her own daughter, who was then 8: "She thought she wanted to be a doctor too, until she found out that doctors have to stick their fingers up people's butts."

I once worked with a pharmacist who went to medical school because she wanted to be a pediatric oncologist. When she told me this, I said, "I guess someone has to do that" and she replied, "It's the happiest place in the hospital!"

Um, whatever. I've heard this from other people, however.

I found out recently that she did not go into pediatric oncology, but Infectious Disease, and mostly works with AIDS patients. That's probably just as difficult.

My understanding about pediatric LTC is that if you think people in regular nursing homes never have visitors, go to a pediatric facility. Another poster on here said that most people think there's a line of parents down the street during visiting hours, but there isn't. Someone on another board, who had to place her son in such a facility until they could arrange for home nursing said, "Some of those parents dropped off their precious children, and never even called to see how they were doing." The most depressing thing to her were the kids who were in the facility, and whose parents couldn't have visited if they had wanted to, because the parents were in prison for trying to kill their children.

I know a woman whose son is rapidly approaching the point where they will have to send him to such a place (we've been saying this for as long as I've known her - long story) and cannot imagine what a wrenching decision that must be.

I cannot stand the elderly, so I would NEVER work a unit that had elderly regardless of the unit. So I guess that leaves me with Peds and OB/L&D.

I can honestly say I would never work LTC or Med Surg.

One of my downfalls is that I am not patient enough for pediatric patients. I can admit that to myself with no problem. I would not harm them, would do the best to render them the same care as anyone else, but I would rather not deal with them.