Best Specialty for a People Person?

Nurses General Nursing

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Just wondering, what do you think is the best nursing specialty for someone who is a people person and wants to get to know their patient while at the same time, they want to work in a hospital setting?

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Specializes in ICU, Psych.

I would say Psych. You have to get to know your patients, and if you are not a people person then you are likely to fail in establishing a therapeutic rapport.

I worked Psych for quite a while, it can be rewarding, but it also has the ability to suck the very life out of you if you fail to maintain a 100% professional distance to your work.

Many Psych patients also have multiple other aliments that will need to be treated along with their axis 1 diagnosis. Many Psych patients require multiple inpatient stays.

Hope this helps you some.

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Everybody loves the transport nurse.

When I was transport nurse, I transported ICU and stepdown patients for procedures. ICU patients need to have a nurse with them at all times, so I would go around to all the ICUs and stepdown and telemetry floors and announce my hours of availability and my pager number.

Transport is a very social job. You get to know nurses all over the hospital. There is time to talk to the awake/aware patients before MRI/CT scan etc. You can only transport one patient at a time and there was time for patient interaction.

You do need years of ICU experience and a large hospital that hires transport nurses.

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Specializes in ICU, CCU, Trauma, neuro, Geriatrics.

Any area you interact with awake patients would be wonderful for a people person. I would steer clear of OR as the patients are sedated and ICU as most of the patients are sedated and many are confused due to the severity of their medical issues.

Many departments are high level interaction with patients, ER is high action along with a lot of interaction but you dont really get to know your patients well as they try to admit or discharge in 4 to 6 hours in most ERs. Step down is higher acuity than Med/surg and you do have a lower nurse patient ratio so you do get to do some more teaching when patients are not off the unit for tests. Med surg has a higher nurse patient ratio compared to other in hospital units but the patients are much less acute so that does allow you time to do more teaching if there are enough nursing assistants to attend to ADLs such as toileting, feeding, bathing etc. Other specialty areas that are high acuity, with generally lower nurse patient ration that need a lot of people skills include pediatrics, neonate, oncology, Open heart, trauma step down, dialysis clinics, sub-acute facilities that take sicker patients with multiple needs such as post trauma awaiting acute rehab placement, doctors office, school nurse, outpatient clinic, camp nurse, and rural nursing gets you a taste of everything in a small hospital. This is of course an outline in a perfect world. Do some homework on what is available in your area.

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Specializes in ICU, ER, EP,.

sry, read wrong

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