Is ortho a good area for a new grad RN?

HI

I preceptored on ortho/trauma and I've been working there full time for about 9 months. It is a heavier floor, but there are perks. Pt's come in all broken, we fix them, and generally they go back to their normal lives. Of course there is a big geriatric/hip/dementia population as well that can be a bit of a challenge. I have 4 pt's on days and 5-6 on nights. Its a fast paced floor, but so far the other helth care professionals help out a lot and the docs are pretty good. There are a lot of back injuries though that you have to be careful about. All in all I'm finding it to be a good place to pick up fundamental nursing skills, but I don't plan on staying longer than a year. One last bonus is that there are very few codes (on my floor anyways) if that freaks you out. Good luck

Ortho was "IT" for me. Get them after surgery already worked up, In and out in maybe 5 days max...and they hardly ever die. Your already tried neuro and didn't like it. If you don't like ortho go try something else. I stayed 22 years.

I've been an Ortho nurse for 5 years and love it. Yes, it is heavy work, yes, you do push a lot of pain meds and yes, ortho patients can be very demanding, but you get to see your pts WALK out of the hospital.
We have a joint replacement program on our small floor and this is the majority of patients we see. Out of bed hours after surgery and discharged on the 4th day. We do not use CPM's anymore (problems with immobility and skin breakdown) foley's are d/c'ed post-op day #1 at 6am, as are PCA's and IVF's. and NO BED PANS! After that they must walk to the bathroom. We have no techs on our floor so the 2 RN's cover up to 6 patients each and give half the patients baths, bathed and clothed and OOB for b'fast. Seem Busy? How about very, very few codes, very little pts in distress (except pain), very few rapid response, very few calls to ortho docs in the middle of the night (there are standing orders for everything under the sun), time to actually talk to patients and get to know them and quite a few night that you can sit and read the news paper and do a crossword.
You do get to keep your skills up in other areas because you do have patients with all kinds of medical hx, COPD, DM, CABG, etc. and we do have remote tele. And we get all different kinds of med/surg pts when census allows. Really check out with your hospital and see what type of Ortho floor you have. Other hospitals in my area have Ortho/Oncology, Ortho/Trauma, etc.
Give it a try, you just might love it!

i am a new grad med/surg float nurse and one of the floors i float to is the ortho floor. It is very specialized and the patients are definitely heavy, but i am learning so much on this floor and love floating there!