how do you find your niche?

For me it has been narrowing it down. I always knew L&D wasn't for me. I worked ambulatory Care as a LVN for several years before my RN. I went to inpatient once I got my RN because I wanted to get some new experience. I have since learned I am not an inpatient nurse, I much prefer the ambulatory setting but maybe not the same specialty I was in before (family med). Ambulatory has so many options and specialities so I'm looking into making a change. I would suggest making a simple list of things you absolutely would not want to do and things that may interest you and see what jobs align with that.

In my 12 years as a nurse I have done:

1 year Oncology floor. I liked it but was physically attacked by a patient and for reasons to detailed to go into here I left that job.

2 years Telemetry/Intermediate care floor. Stayed as long as my sanity could hold out. Very disorganized floor with to many nurse cliques.

1.5 years Interventional Radiology. Loved this job but was constantly put down and bullied by a few of the nurses.

3 months pediatric psych. Just no.

4.5 years Pediatric Diagnostic Imaging. Loved this job so much but the call was getting to the point I had no life except work. The paycheck was nice but having a family and never seeing them was miserable.

2.5 years Radiation Oncology. This is my current position until the end of the week in which I am transferring to the ICU. This is also the job I thought I would retire from because it felt so right until about 3 months ago. However being an office nurse is a whole different world. I love my patients and my coworkers but I am the only nurse and it is extremely draining and I have zero chance for any type of advancement. I also realized I'm not cut out for the 8-4 world.

Luckily nursing is a career with so many choices that if one area doesn't fit you can try a different one. I keep searching for a "home" and I'm hoping the ICU is it. If you would have asked me back when I first became a nurse if I'd ever work in an ICU I would have told you hell no but now with years of experience behind me I feel a calling to go there. I still have a list of areas you won't see me in (ER, L&D, OR) but there's so many options for nurses now the sky's the limit.

Sometimes you've got to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince. Just because you think you know what you want to do, you don't actually know until you get there. After getting my initial experience on a Med / Surg floor, I found myself in an out-patient setting, I thought it was going to be great. No nights, no weekends or holidays, but I was bored and I found that I didn't like working with the same exact people every day (at least in the hospital there was some degree or staff variation every shift). So, back to the in-patient side I went. I scored a job in the PACU at a local community hospital. But, there was the fun of on call and dragging yourself out of bed to go to work in the middle of the night (I found this to be worse than rotating to nights).

Then I moved to a large teaching hospital and took a position in the float pool and have been there for the past 10 years. Every day is different from the next. Even though the hospital is large in size, the vibe on the units is very much like a community hospital. I've been able to learn so much from others around me and having exposure to such amazing medical technology is awesome.

My second week off of orientation in my current position, I was working on the post-op CT surgery unit. One of the patient's monitors rang off w/ sustained VT. Everyone on the unit jumped into action. CPR was initiated, within less than a minute the patient was shocked back to SR. The patient who had been on the brink of death was brought back. When I got back to the nurse's station after the code, I started to cry. The unit secretary asked me if I was crying because the patient didn't make it. I explained to her I was emotional because I finally felt like I was working where I was meant to be. That day the patient who we had coded bought himself an ICD and was discharged home a few days later. It's not an easy job, but I definitely found my niche.