Choosing a speciality for my senior practicum

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I'm in my senior year of nursing school and the time has come for me to put in a request for my senior practicum. The only problem is I have only done rotations in medsurg, psych, and geriatrics but didn't really like any of those. I did a summer internship in the ED and it soooo isn't for me. As far is kids/babies goes, I love them but from my experience from my internship in ED, working with sick kids/babies really isn't for me either. I was thinking maybe oncology but IDK....

It's just hard choosing a speciality to go with my personality. I'm somewhat in between a personality type A and B because I have qualities from both types.

My questions are how did you choose a speciality? Was it completely different from what you did your senior practicum in? What specialities are for people who are neither type A or type B personalities?

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How about a cardiac unit or an ICU? A cardiac unit is specialized but you still use a lot of skills that you would in med-surg. In an ICU, you would see some really intense situations and learn some great assessment skills. Cardiac, med-surg, and ICU preceptorships would also probably look good on a resume because experience in those areas can be used in many different settings.

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Specializes in ER.

I am a senior nursing student myself, so I'm probably not much help, but can you do your practicum in the OR? You didn't mention having been there, so just a thought. I noticed you said you didn't like medsurg (and I'm not really sure I do either, to be honest), but I've found there are huge differences between medsurg floors hospital-to-hospital and even within one hospital. Some floors/hospitals' medsurg units end up with really, really sick patients (like when I did a clinical at Grady Memorial [ATL]... whew) that require you to use your skills a lot and do really detailed assessments, and some medsurg units have a lot of patients where you almost wonder why they're still there... So maybe even try another medsurg floor in a hospital you've never had clinical at before?

By the way, SO jealous you have the option of being in a specialty unit for practicum- our school requires us to do ours on a medsurg floor unless we've been an LPN or EMT before and then they "might" consider a request for a specialty unit. :/

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Specializes in Operating Room.

As a soon to be senior myself, I picked the OR. I just loved it there! Even though I do not have a type A personality, I feel that I can still make it in the OR. And I figure, if I decide the OR isn't the place for me, I will at least know one place that I do NOT want to work in the future!

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Specializes in Tele, ICU, ED, Nurse Instructor,.

I will choose something that I would have a good learning experience. I agree with the Cardiac or ICU. The reason is with Cardiac Units if you learn the heart you can figure out about the other organs of the body because the heart supplies the blood to the organs. Whatever you choose just try to your best and I hope it will be a great learning experience that you can carry on with your nursing practice. GOOD LUCK!!!!

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If you're not leaning one way or the other, can you just have your professor put you somewhere? That sounds weird, but when I did my senior practicum I had requested cardiac and was placed on a respiratory floor which I wasn't thrilled about. At all.

It turned out to be an awesome experience and I am so grateful that I was placed there...it would never have been a place I would have requested, and I would have missed it had I not been assigned there by someone else.

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Specializes in Nursing Professional Development.

When you close your eyes and imagine yourself working as a nurse, what type of job do you imagine? That's the key question.

Use your preceptorship to give you both the skills and the professional connections to get that type of job and succeed in it.

If you can't imagine yourself working in ANY nursing job ... that's a whole other problem.

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Specializes in ED.

I am worried about this too. I've work on the same floor that I did my med-surg 1 clinical on and by shear luck, I'm on the same floor for med-surg 2. I definitely don't want to precept here. :uhoh3: I have had enough!

I keep hearing that this hospital hires new grads on units where they precept or where they are working as a tech. It is SUCH a hard decision to make!

I took this https://allnurses.com/general-nursing-student/quiz-help-you-107951.html quiz and it placed me in the neonatal ICU. I would have never even considered a career in peds but now that I see why the out come of this quiz was what it was, it got me thinking. Give it a shot, you never know what you'll come up with and it might be worth exploring.

meredith

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Specializes in ED, trauma.

That quiz was neat! It placed me in Emergency Medicine/Critical Care/Interventional Radiology...pretty much what I expected!

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Specializes in ED, trauma.
That quiz was neat! It placed me in Emergency Medicine/Critical Care/Interventional Radiology...pretty much what I expected!

For anyone else interested....

The link is: Pathway Evaluation Program

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Specializes in Acute Rehab, Neuro/Trauma, Dialysis.

I would suggest doing med/surg or ICU if you are unsure. I have been told by several people (including nurse managers and DONs that do hiring) that these two are the most versitile and are looked for by those who are doing the hiring. What is important is graduating and getting a job, once you have graduated you can get hired at a hospital and maybe try a few other units. Good luck!

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