I'm an INTJ and I have had my fair share of going from one speciality to another to find my niche. Its hard to tell where I will excel during my student nurse years because there's always my mentor/clinical instructor to guide me during clinical practice and to save the day if I made some missteps. So decided that it would be better to determine the best speciality for me once I qualified and worked autonomously.
After I qualified, the hospital that I went to work allowed me to rotate to various specialities before we were assigned/given the chance to choose our speciality. I tried working in various wards (medical, surgical, pediatric, maternity and so on) and I have to say for an INTJ, it was terribly exhausting. The high turn over of patients during an 8 hour shift was torturous. When my rotation to specialty wards finished I thought "finally, I can have some peace and quiet". My time working in intensive care units (medical ICU, surgical ICU, pediatric, neonatal) were the best experiences I've had. However, working in ICUs meant that most of the time I was solitary. Of course I needed to socialise a bit for professional and personal reasons. After working in ICUs I went to OR and PACU and just like in ICUs it was a fantastic experience especially in trauma surgery. It had the perfect blend of solitary work and a little bit of socialisation every now and then. After OR and PACU I went to emergency, outpatient, and community clinics. I never thought that I would survive in community clinic for 2 years but I have to admit that it was excruciatingly tiresome to have had worked there. I enjoyed working in emergency department for some time but it was very taxing for someone with my personality.
At present, I'm back in OR and I'm enjoying myself working as a perioperative practitioner (mostly as scrub/circulating role). I have to work with a small group of people (mostly they're the same group of 4-5 people that I work with every day), focusing on one patient at a time. I can concentrate myself in the surgical procedure whilst being able to multi-task if the situation demands it. Nonetheless, working in OR fits in my personality type perfectly.
P.S. Many of the people that I work with are introverts, believe it or not (from surgeons to anaesthetists, theatre nurses, ODPs, and even support workers).
Aug 5, '12 by hiddencatRNQuote from PhoenixbyrdI think our personalities are more complex than what this boils them down to. And a variety of personalities do well in nursing, otherwise we'd all be exactly the same and we're not.
Feb 24 by markmenciasI'm an INTJ and I have had my fair share of going from one speciality to another to find my niche. Its hard to tell where I will excel during my student nurse years because there's always my mentor/clinical instructor to guide me during clinical practice and to save the day if I made some missteps. So decided that it would be better to determine the best speciality for me once I qualified and worked autonomously.
