Back pain RN

I won't lie lol, I don't know of any type of bedside nursing that doesn't require long periods of standing. The only time I sit down is to chart on the computer. And after doing four days in a row, it's pretty tiring.

That being said, your average nicu baby probably weighs less than a small watermelon so there's not a lot of heavy lifting. You will be bending down however, to stock isolettes, to help mums with breastfeeding positioning, and sometimes there is some contortioning involved to adjust babies' breathing tubes when they're on ventilators or to help the docs hold the babies during lumbar punctures, etc.

Agree, not a lot of sitting time unless you are feeding babies, especially in a level 3 or 4 NICU. Our patients aren't as big as adults for sure, but you will get the occasional older baby who weighs over 10 pounds. We bend a lot to do things.

Maybe go shadow and see how it will work for you :)

Thank you for your insight! I agree that shadowing is probably the best way to see if it's a good fit. Do hospitals usually let you shadow in other areas though? I've only been at my current position for about 4 months. Thank you again!

We have shadowers a lot. Just contact the manager and ask :)Also, check with HR because you may not be able to transfer within your hospital for 6mo to a year if you have only been in this position for 4 months.

I've worked on a busy surgical floor for 3 years handling 5-7 patients a shift, and now have been in the ICU for a few months handling 2-3 patients and in my experience so far the ICU is less physically demanding. Sure, most of my patients have to be turned every 2 hours and bathed and what not, but over all floor nursing is more physical than critical care. Even the proximity of the nurse's station to the rooms makes a big difference. In the unit the furthest room away is maybe 25 feet from the desk, where as on the floor the furthest room was at the far end of the hall.

The challenge of the unit though is not the physical demands, but the critical nature of the patients and specialized knowledge.

I would advise you to do some floor work before jumping into critical care though. It may be more physically demanding, but I think a year or so of med/surg nursing is much better for establishing some foundational nursing and time management skills than going straight into critical care. It will also help you develop some of those nursing "spidey senses", which take a while to develop and come in handy while dealing with patients who are knocking on death's door. Unless you have some significant medical experience, work in med/surg first.

Adult med-surg has nothing to do with NICU. These aren't little adults, we live in a world all our own.