Does it feel to everyone else that many newer nurses glamourize the ER and ICU?

[The0Walrus]

I'm curious. Most of the people I went to school with want to be ICU or ER nurses. They've never worked in the ICU or the ER but that's all they want to do. I told one girl who refused to work anywhere else other than ICU to go into a nursing home if she needs a job. She refused it and it took her a few months to finally go into a nursing home. She quit after a month because of her standards. It's the same thing when it comes to med surg and psych nursing. It feels like many newer nurses look down upon any other nurses other than ER and ICU.

Another girl I know said she's wanted to work as a psych nurse forever, but when she was offered the ER position and psych position she took the ER position. I asked her why she chose ER over psych and she said she knows ER better. Now she complains about the work load from a trauma 2 hospital. I asked her why she didn't just transfer into psych since it's what she wanted and she didn't really give me a concrete answer just basically that she's stuck.

Does it feel that way to anyone else? When it comes to ER/ICU it feels like they only respect those specialties. Thanks!

[Emergent, RN]

Yes, ER and ICU are more dramatically suited for TV. No one is going to make a riveting show featuring a nursing home or outpatient surgery center. 

[Squeamish BBA LPN, LPN]

Imagine how many lawyers were devastated to realize that most attorneys never see the inside of a courtroom. 

[Crystal-Wings, LVN]

Yes that’s what it seems like on this forum. 

[ThePrincessBride, MSN, RN, NP]

3 hours ago, Squeamish BBA LPN said:

1. Unless it has changed since I was actively working in acute care. ICU et ER specialties are [still] paid the most. 

2. ICU et ER specialties have been the most glamorized specialties in Hollywood et MSM. 

At both of the hospitals I work at, nurses are paid based on experience. Specialty isn't taken into account.

[JadedCPN, BSN, RN]

16 minutes ago, ThePrincessBride said:

At both of the hospitals I work at, nurses are paid based on experience. Specialty isn't taken into account.

Same here for the past 3 hospitals I've worked at over the last dozen-ish years. Even as a float nurse, acute care only and critical care only floats get paid the same float differential amount; only time you get a higher float differential is if you do both acute care and critical care.

[Dacatster, ADN]

OK here is a series... well maybe not a true series, 3 episodes. This is for M/S the show is on Hula called "Getting On" it is made by the BBC so it is English. 

[anewsns]

Yes ! It’s an ego thing. I think many get on units and then realize they don’t want to go into either of those. I used to want cardiac ICU now that would make me want to vomit. I guess I felt I had something to prove at the time. I found neuro stepdown to be best but also like med surg, gen med , ortho. I really strongly respect people who know themselves and exactly what they want to do. I feel like the egos are a little bit less than when I got out of school. Many of my new grad orientees are doing the hospital as a stepping stone to something more chill later , though some are still obsessed with the glamour. Some people just want to go to ICU To get extra foundations for when they become an NP or CRNA 

[LovingLife123]

ICU is glamorous?  All I did my last shift was clean up poop.  Seriously.  We don’t have techs very often so we are responsible for total care.  My patients were vented and on tube feeds.  Only one had any drips.  They both pooped all day long.

I wouldn’t say my nursing life is glamorous.  I clean up poop and keep people “alive” longer than I should.  I see every shift there are fates worse than death.

[guineapignurse, BSN, RN]

I have been a nurse for 3 years and all my classmates wanted ER, ICU, or L&D.  I started in psych and only went to subacute rehab for some medical experience to do 2 years in med surg so I wasn’t stuck in psych. I will start on a medical unit of a local hospital on January 4th and keep my subacute rehab job PRN just in case med surg doesn’t work out

[Iheartwoundcare, MSN, APRN, NP]

On 12/1/2020 at 10:48 PM, Emergent said:

The wound care nurses seem amazing to this ER nurse. They can do a wound vac with their eyes closed. Their mastery of technique,  terminology,  and the myriad of dressings is utterly astonishing. 

Awwww. Thank you Emergent. Wound care was all I have ever wanted to do. I did some stents on rehab floors but ultimately love consulting at different hospitals for wounds.

But I will say I respect any nurse. MedSurg has all kinds of different patients so your knowledge base must be broad, ER nurses have to be on the ball, ICU has to constantly stop people from going to see Jesus, Rehab is just Med-Surg with high fall risks and a terrible nurse:patient ratio. We all have something to give our populations. We are all nurses. 

[YG FNP, ADN, BSN, MSN, RN, APRN, NP]

When I started nursing I was on a med-surg diabetic/renal floor. We had regular med-surg, all the DKA drips, and CAPD patients.  The floor was not respected by the other specialty floor nurses or administration. I felt this was mostly due to the type of patients we had (meaning low income, homeless, or medicaid patients). When we were floated to the cardiac unit we would see how other floors had new equipment, fresh coats of paint, and working ice machines and be jealous of that rather than the type of patient that was being cared for.  I worked that floor for 4 years before we moved and I switched to the ER.  The thing I loved about the ER was the immediate availability of the doctors/providers (unheard of on a med-surg floor) and thinking on your feet (that I learned from working the med-surg floor). I never returned to med-surg only because I never found another floor like the one I had started on. What I saw in other hospitals was nurses who refused drips of any kind, were afraid of even trying to start an IV, and had become overly 'specialized'. While I appreciate growing knowledge in one area and being great at a certain patient population, I fear for our profession when we pit one area against another as equating to be a better nurse.  

Absolutely, find your passion in nursing, but never give up on learning from each other and respecting each other.  Regardless of the perceived glamour, your patients appreciate you whatever floor you are on.

[Maria Frances, ADN, RN]

As a newer nurse (five years experience), I agree that ER, ICU, and NP are what everyone wants to do, but a lot of nurses want to get the "med-surg" experience first so that they are more marketable. However, their "goal" is many times one of those three. 

I've been a tele nurse, rehab nurse, urgent care nurse, med-surg nurse, same-day surgery nurse, a brief time in ER (I was too inexperienced at the time so I had to resign), and a tele-neuro nurse. As a med-surg nurse, I'd do a lot of clinical/medical things, but so much of my days were clouded by the non-medical issues that I would have to deal with - a seemingly constant barrage of requests that I constantly had to deal with, and if not dealt with quick enough, complaints ensued. So much of my day felt like being a waitress instead of being a nurse. It's overbearing - things like toileting a patient can take you away from the rest of the floor sometimes for 20 minutes, so can getting a patient out of bed or feeding a patient. It once took me 40 minutes to feed a patient. 

I think the notion is that these things occur less in the ED/ICU, and it's more critical care - therefore the focus is more on the medicine. I think that with the advent of NPs, many students are considering this as a viable alternative to going to medical or physician assistant school. I see a lot of nurses that are using bedside floor nursing with no intention whatsoever on continuing after 2 years - to just get experience. Some stay on longer but only a few that I know of plan on being bedside as a career. 

I think that ER/ICU are looked at as "glamorous" because the assumption is that there is less of the "minutiae" that is associated with floor nursing. They assume that it is less about things like feeding, AM care, ambulating, getting patients out of bed and more about the medical stuff. Floor nursing has a routine, whereas the assumption of ER/ICU is that it's more exciting. And they are kind of right when it comes to ER. The ICU has their own fair share of 'nursing assistant" activities - patients still have to be bathed, fed, gotten out of bed, turning, etc. Of course , if you have nursing assistants that is a huge help, but at the end of the day, you're still responsible for making sure it's done. There is definitely less of that "routine" stuff in the ER, the focus is on "critical" elements. Of course, if a patient is soiled, you have to clean them, and I think people are delusional if they don't realize that in the ER, you will be required to clean some of the most disgusting stuff imaginable. Lice, maggots, the homeless - lots of gross stuff. 

I think that a lot of people are now going into nursing because of the allure of the NP - thinking that it's a different path to becoming a pseudo-physician, also. Don't know if that plays into the "glamor" of the ER/ICU but it does make for a lot of unhappy people when they end up getting to the bedside and realize it's not what they thought.