Why is it "Med/Surg?" Why aren't they separated?

Specialties Med-Surg

Published

It seems to me that these are two completely different areas.

At our hospital, there are separate floors for medical pts and surgical pts. The staff are hired to the floor; you only float if one floor is short.

Is it common for hospitals to *not* separate the medical and surgical pts?

I feel lost sometimes up on the surgical floor. I know those nurses feel the same way when they float down to our floor.

I am just perplexed that these two groups get lumped together so often.

Specializes in Med/Surg, Ortho.

Although most surgical floors try to limit their patient load to just surgicals, realistically some patients come in medical and go surgical while there. Someone comes in with abdominal pain,, ends up being a ruptured appy or diverticuli or whatever. There are times when medical floors are just way to overwhelmed and beds are beds. As a surgical nurse you should know how to care for CHF, COPD, pneumonias and other medical issues that also arise with your surgical patient. So having those patients on the surgical floor isnt a big change.

Specializes in Med-Surg, Geriatric, Behavioral Health.

At my hospital, there are the med floors and surgical floors. However, a medical patient is more apt to be placed on a surgical floor here if the NEED arrises (no more medical beds in house) than vice versa.

Also let's not forget the reality of today's hospital.

"We have no beds on any of the surgical units right now so we're sending him to your medicine floor."

At my hospital, medicine and surgey are two completely different entities but that's just not what ends up happening in times of bed crunches.

The ICU's work the same way. If the MICU is full, they get shoved into an SICU bed. As long as it's an ICU bed, no one seems to care.

Hmmm, I guess it's more my environment. Our hospital really separates the medical pts from the surgical. If we have a med pt that ends up as a surgical candidate, then after the surgery the pt goes to the surgical floor.

It just seems like such completely different beasts to me. Also, I think that our med floor moves at a much faster pace than the surgical floor in some respects (this is not a generalized statement. I mean that specifically in regards to our two floors).

Anyway, are there any hospitals out there that combine these units? Or do most hospitals keep them at least superficially separate?

Specializes in Med-Surg, Trauma, Ortho, Neuro, Cardiac.

We have a medical floor, and a surgical floor. Usually there are more medical patients and they overflow to surgical. Surgical overflows to the trauma unit where I work, as well as medical to our unit. But surgical doesn't overflow to medical. Got it? LOL

It takes a while to be comfortable floating.

Often medical patients become surgical patient, such as abdominal pain patients.

I agree they are two different beasts and it seems strange to combine them. I think in some areas, they just lump non-critical or step down patients together.

The hospital I worked at combined the two. Though we did get more medical than surgical, when we did get surgical, it was usually 2nd day post-op. I know the nurses weren't happy when we got surgical pts, either pre or post-op.

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Specializes in ABMT.

Our hospital is too small to separate them. Our floor is 40 beds, med/surg/tele, not too unusual to see all three in one bed! We have another unit that has 20 beds and sees mostly fresh post-ops--plus they take all the kids. These two floors plus L&D/MB, a small rehab unit, and a 9 bed ICU is the extent of our inpatient capacity. We don't do any cardiac surgeries; however, we do perform ortho, GI, ENT.

I work in the Oncology (inpt) dept in a hospital. We also get medical, surgical, and, telemetry patients!! It's a good experience for me because I get to take care of so many diverse kinds of patients and manage many types of situations.

Specializes in Med/Surge, Psych, LTC, Home Health.

My hospital also has a medical floor and a surgical floor, but the surgical floor gets the overflow from the medical floor in crunch times. Again, like most places, it is RARELY ever the other way around. I love it that I can take care of a bowel resection patient, and then walk into the next room and take care of a COPD'er, whereas the nurses who work on the medical floor are usually LOST when they float to our floor. I feel perfectly confortable when I go to their floor. :)

And our floor also gets the kids, as well as most oncology patients and urology patients.

We don't have as many codes on our floor, or other dying patients. So, that's an area that I AM more uncomfortable with than the nurses on the medical floor.

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