Navy Nurse Questions

Kookinitreal-

Since you have not offered your rank I have o clue when you went to OIS, my wife went in 2003 and it was no knife and fork school. It was when I went in 1997, but things have changed. The experience is more closelyt matched with that of boot camp, no, they are not the same in the least. you have to keep in mind that a teenager out of high school requires a different structure than an adult who has just spent 4,5, or 8 years in a university.

As for work stations, I'm all ER/ Trauma/ ICU. Started there in NMCSD in 1997 in the ER, went to Great Lakes in the ICU, then to Sigonella, Italy to the ER. I agree that people in the Med/ Surg floors have it rough, as for the schedule, I worked the same as you. I had every other weekend off or worked every other weekend, depends on your perception. As far as call, been there done that too and I didn't get paid extra for it. Alos have done the NOD too. Have you ever been a civilian nurse? I got in 2002 for 11 months because I thought the grass was greener, trust me it wasn't. My wife was a civilian nurse before she came in the Navy and she had the same requirements of being on call. I don't doubt you're overworked, we all are, just read an article in the paper about how overworked the military nurses are, it's a tough time right now. I've been where you are at, contrary to your belief, the specialty areas require as much work if not more. No I never had 20 patients to pass meds on or assess, but the mental demands of the specialty areas can be quite high.

I too am sorry your having a bad experience there, it happens, I've had them everywhere I went, including the civilian world. Having stuck it out and been in 10+ years, now in DUINS it's starting to pay off. I put on LCDR in August and life has never been so good. I met with a CAPT the other day whose been in for 33 years and still likes it, actually both him and his wife have been in, her for 26 years. Once you pay your dues you start to get the rewards and the yearly raise, promotions, and other benfits don't hurt either.

As for time to do personal stuff at work, never heard of that, that's why it's called work, not personal time. you may have a time management problem there. As for the charge nurse hounding, they obviously don't recognize the need for you all to have your full 30min. for lunch, you need the break. That's just poor management on his/ her part and probably a lack of willingness to cover your patients, but that's a guess.

LCDR(s) Dan

O.K. First of all, going to Med/ Surg is not old guard thinking, that's new guard. The thought process being that if you have general nursing knowledge, a.k.a Med/ surg experience, you'll be more useful in the field. Those words came straight from ADM Busekholer (sp) herself in Feb '06, cause I asked her myself. She expects EVERY nurse to be a generalist first then get your subspecialty code as the opportunity arises. If you look at all your codes 1900 (nurse generalist) is the first one. You're right, I did come in at a different time and I lucked out out with being specialty the whole time. That's doesn't mean that I have NEVER worked on a med-surg floor. Stationed in Sigonella where there were only 3 nurses to work the floors in the whole hospital including the ED, believe me I did my share. Anyone coming in to the Navy now is going to be expected to work the Med-surg floor, it's a current way of life. Your depiction of life on a med-surg floor is misleading, yes life is tough, Navy life is tough, nursing life is tough. However, coming on here and complaining about it does nothing, but make Navy nursing appear to be a bad deal. Your experience is just that yours, I don't thinking you want to work smarter, not harder. I think you are indeed jealous and your efforts would be better suited to trying to solve your current problem vs. finding a way around it. Dodging the problem does nothing for you or Navy nursing, facing and solving things like this is what will set you apart from other Navy nurses, any Nurse can dodge the problem. Think about it......

LCDR(s) Dan

Sir,
This could go on forever. Again, I agree with you 100% I say send all accessions to one of the big 3 hospitals and make them all work the med/surg floor. Once you've worked the floor for a year then you can go to peds/mother-baby/psych/ED/OR/ICU or whatever your fancy. Your right...I've been on the busiest med/surg floor in the Navy for 18mos and I can work circles around just about every nurse regardless of how long they've been a nurse. When I float to another floor "hey, just tell me what patients I have...and the combo to the med room" and I'm set. Here's the unfortunate reality check...

Ens pm (I don't know this person) he/she probaby a great peds nurse...does everything he/she is asked...great all around sailor. (I'm just using her/him b/c she/he has a lot of posts on this site) (not trying to single you out p.m. so don't get mad. just using you as an example for danzrn)
PM is a (7p-7a) peds nurse. This is just a blind guess...But I'm willing to bet this nurse has what I would call an extremely easy patient load. So here's a pm peds nurse with probably not a lot of nursing skill (nothing personal p.m.) who has been sent out to the fleet and has been told she/he will be able to crosstrain to a specialty area after she/he has worked the peds floor for a year. OK...Now here we have all the nurses that work up on the upper 4th & 5th deck. A lot of great nurses with a lot of skills who are taking care of really sick people day and night. (barely enough time to pee and go to lunch) I haven't seen any of these nurses have any priority when it comes to going on deployments/or crosstraining. So here we are...doing the real dirty work with no incentive...want to go from peds/mother-baby/psych to the ICU/ED/OR...(no problem) even though the folks on 4 and 5 take care of these patients everyday. Want to go on a 3 month cruise(with only peds pm experience)...no problem.

You and pm seem to really love navy nursing, and that's great...(I wasn't there so I don't know for sure) but when asked by the hospital detailer where you wanted to work I doubt they said "we are overstaffed in the med/surg dept. Could you pick some other dept to work." It probably went something like this "I'm really excited about being a Navy nurse. I have such and such experience. I would really like to work in (blank) dept." I don't understand how being a peds night nurse makes for a more qualified ED/ICU/OR nurse...but it really doesn't matter...

If the navy was serious about having more experienced general nurses they would send everyone upstairs for a while. You wouldn't have the opportunity to be a pm peds nurse(1st year out of school) and go on a float(pm I'm really not trying to pick on you). Who's dodging what? I'm sure you and pm had the opportunity to go med/surg...and you didn't...that's ok. Doesn't sound like it held either of you back. In fact, you're both doing better than me. Why would the viewers of this post not want to follow yours and pm track?
GO TO A SMALL COMMAND...OR YOU REALLY WANT TO WORK WITH PREGNANT WOMEN/CHILDREN/PSYCH....

Read some of the postings, wanted to let you know that in the Navy you might not be able to leave a Med/Surg floor after 12 month if their are no avaible other units to transfer to and your stuck in Med/Surg whether you like it our not, try to avoid small command state side, not sure about the overseas. some nursing spend 18-24 months in Med/surg