Back pain RN

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I'm a new nurse and really want to work in critical care. I like the intensity both intellectually and emotionally of an ICU, but I worry about the physical intensity. I worked as a CNA on a busy orthopedic floor and my back started giving me trouble. When I became a nurse, I switched to pediatric endoscopy. It's great for my physical ability, but I'm so bored and it's not the right fit for my passion. I think NICU might be a great fit for my passion and ability. Is the NICU physically challenging? How often can you sit? I get back pain from standing too long and moving heavy patients. I am otherwise healthy and strong though. Thank you so much!

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Specializes in NICU.

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.

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Specializes in NICU, PICU, PACU.

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 :)

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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!

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Specializes in NICU, PICU, PACU.

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.

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Specializes in Critical Care/Vascular Access.

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.

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Specializes in NICU, Infection Control.

Unfortunately, 'spidey senses' developed on adults are usually wrong for infants. It took me 6 months, more or less, to UNlearn grown-up stuff and learn what babies do to tell you they're in trouble or just acting like a normal baby. So, I usually recommend that new grads who want to go into NICU try to go right in. If there are no NICU jobs available, try for Mother-baby or normal nursery. That is jmo, and others may disagree, but, you've already spent all your school career in adult/med-surg areas, specialties like NICU are given brief lip-service and that's abt it.

Some schools let you do a focus semester, and will try to get you in a NICU. That is a big help. Shadowing is terrific, as far as it goes.

As far as physical demands, we used to move a lot of equipment, and plugging monitors, O2, suction cannisters can be very acrobatic, depending on how imaginative the engineers where in placing the sockets, so there is that to consider. Surprising, holding an 8# baby for an extended period of time gets tiring, and your back will hurt in areas you didn't know you had--I used to have pain somewhere around my shoulder blade.

On the plus side, you will learn more than you thought possible, and will use principles you learned in physiology daily. You will see abnormalities in anatomy that you will understand by comparing it to what you learned in your pre-reqs. Babies are endlessly fascinating and frequently fun to work with.

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Specializes in NICU, PICU, PACU.

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

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Specializes in NICU, Infection Control.

After >35years in NICU, nursing office wanted me to take care of a post-partum mom. I pointed out that the last time I had taken care of a "grown-up" was 1972. Then I discovered the IVs on these moms didn't have pumps--I was just supposed to "eye-ball" the rate.

They had to stop me from grabbing the O2 for myself. The next week, I retired.

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