Favorite Specialty

Ruby Vee, BSN · Jul 26, 2017

What are your specialties and what makes you love them? Parts of your job, duties, etc.
Looking for insight into specialties I may be interested in.

You're going to get answers from folks who love LTC but hate ICU, who love ICU but hate psych, who love psych but hate Peds, who love Peds but hate NICU, who love NICU but hate orthopedics . . . . and on and on and on. If you're still a student, and from your user name, it looks as if you are, keep your mind open when you're in clinicals in various areas.

Med/Surg is a specialty that has a lot of detracters, but it's probably the best way to expose yourself to patients with a variety of disease processes and surgeries. It's great experience, and it's a great place to learn what you like (cardiac patients) and what you dislike (GI bleeds!), what interests you (ECGs) and what does not (anything to do with neuro). You develop basic skills and see a lot of different things. You might not be an expert on chest tubes, but you'll see them there and learn the basics. NG tubes may not be common, but you'll see a bunch of them, get to place a few and get comfortable with them.

My personal niche is cardiac surgery ICU, although I've worked in CCU for many years and enjoyed that, too. Anything involving Pediatrics makes me cringe (including newborn nursery) and if I never have to visit a patient's home again, I will be ecstatic. But your milage will undoubtedly vary.

2018nursewi · Jul 27, 2017

Thank you for your input! Is it wrong to be intimidated by med/surg? Its a little scary to imagine myself thrown into it using alllll of my skills (many not performed on things other than the education manikins) right away - even though I know that is the best way to learn.

Purple_roses · Jul 27, 2017

I'm a new grad on tele. I hate mornings more than I hate shoveling a foot of snow at the crack of dawn, and that's saying something. Mornings on probably almost any floor are full of trying to get meds passed on time in addition to everything else you need to do. I have nightmares about morning meds :cheeky: But by the end of the day, I'm usually laughing with a coworker about something.

I do not like how quickly a shift can go downhill on tele. One minute your patient is telling jokes, and the next their tele box looks like a toddler scribbled all over it because of how funky their heart rhythm went. But at the same time, this is helping me to keep my cool in emergencies and it's helping me gain first hand knowledge on treatment protocols.

I do like how much I'm learning on tele. I'm going through dysrhythmia courses in addition to my shifts, and I feel like I'm getting a great foundation for wherever the future takes me. I also see a lot of med/surg type patients, so I feel like I'm gaining more general knowledge and skills too.

ChryssyD · Aug 1, 2017

You're still in school, and one of the things you learn in clinicals is what nursing is like in various specialties. For instance, when I was in school, I was in OB clinical when I discovered that I could not STAND screaming women--I just wanted to shoot them up with everything in the narc drawer; needless to say, the idea of OB as a specialty never once crossed my mind. Crying babies, though, are a completely different matter--babies you can pick up and cuddle! Plus they're so darn cute! I wound up in peds. :)

Ask your professors and clinical instructors about their specialties, and when you're on various rotations keep your eyes and ears open. You will figure out what is right for you.