Can someone please tell me about these specialties?

[RevolutioN2013]

Not a lot of posting in the specialties board so I thought I would ask here. I am very interested in learning about these specialties and wanted to know what a "day in the life" might look like AND what type of illness/injuries the patients might be suffering from and what your role is in treating.

1. Nero floor nurse - So I figure this would be victims of head trauma or brain tumors, but what else? Are most patients awake or on vents? What is a day in the life on this floor like? What are the pros and cons? What do you need to do to get on this type of floor? Any specialty training needed? Will they typically hire new grads?

2. Public Health - Anyone worked PH? I can see the potential for great rewards for your soul in helping folks who are in desperate need of care and education! By and large are they happy to have the help or are they unappreciative? What kinds of things do you see? Will they typically hire new grads? What are the pros and cons?

Thank you so much for the input! I take the TEAS in one month and send in my application to Mercy on Dec 1. I have a back-up plan, of course, but regardless of where and when I go I can't wait to begin this journey and am so excited about everything I'm going to learn! I was originally going to apply straight to a PA program but felt I could not make that type of commitment without knowing where my affinity lies and I know that clinical rotations in nursing will help me in that area. I also believe that nursing will give me a more well-rounded knowledge of health care - it feels more holistic than the disease treatment models MD's are trained in. Anyway, I know there are a LOT of areas of nursing that I will not get to see on clinical rotations and I'm not sure how else to learn about them to find out if they are something I would like to do. Any suggestions on how best to broaden your "toe-dipping" experiences outside of your school's clinical experiences?

Thank you!!

[Simply Complicated]

A neuro floor depends on the level of acuity, if the hospital is stroke accredited, etc. I worked on a neuro surgical unit. It's like a regular medical floor, you just have a lot of stroke patients, we got post op crani's 24-48 hours after the ICU if they have no complications. We had patients with any kind of bleed, some head traumas, we also post op laminectomy's and things like that. Basically if it was neuro related, they came to us. We also got overflow of regular M/S when they were low on beds in other areas.

Vents are generally left for the ICU. You get a combination of patients, most are awake, but depending on the severity of their condition, you will get ones that are non- responsive. Again depending on the acuity, depends on training. Some places want you to have some good M/S experience first, others will hire without. May require training for telemetry, knowing how to read strips. If it is a stroke accredited hospital, most likely requires you to get stroke training.

[Annaiya, NP]

Coming from a pediatric perspective, our neuro floor also has an epilepsy monitoring unit where the patients are video taped while hooked up to an EEG. They do all sorts of different things to try to induce siezures and different neuclear medicine studies to try to pinpoint where the siezures are coming from. They also take the kids who have grids place and who will be undergoing a lobectomy. It is a very interesting place to work, a different kind of floor nursing and, yes, they take new grads:)