I am a RN currently working on an acute surgical unit in a large teaching hospital (been there for a little over a year), I also have previous 7 months experience on an orthopedic unit and a few months experience in a nursing home. I LOVE being a nurse despite the stress and I am still working on my time management which has greatly improved over the years. On my unit we get orthopedic overflow, a lot of basic lap appy's and choles, SBO's, mastectomy's, OMFS pts, gastric bypass patients, plastic surgeries (mainly flap) pts and some medicine pts. My unit has a high turnover we usualy don't have pts for more than 4 days besides the select few that end up staying while. I like my unit and am definitely comfortable there. I want to move to a higher level of care to learn more but I am so unsure of where to go... I think I would like to move to a unit with at little more Continuity of care because I love getting to know my patients and being able to talk with them. I am more familiar wth surgical patients and am comfortable with them. I like medicine patients too we just don't get them as often. I've floated to the ED before and I don't think I would like that. And Ive floated to PACU which was cool but also not much of continuity of care. Ive floated to surgical oncology (critical care stepdown unit) I liked it but I could only take regular floor beds so i guess I didn't get much of a feel for it. My main question is how do I find my niche and what I really like ? And any suggestions on where to go? I have a very positive personality (some coworkers on my unit actually call me a fairy), I'm extremely caring and understanding, I like to take time to focus on my patients (which is hard on my unit because we can get up to 6 patients and the turnover is high), I can move quick and I do like to learn, I haven't had very many rapid responses so I get a little shaky in those situations but I am able to handle them, I'm good with IV's and blood draws, I love wound dressings. I've considered possibly moving to BMT or CTICU-stepdown but I am so unsure of where to go! Any suggestions ? Sorry for the long rant. Any advice or descriptions of your units would be much appreciated.
I am a RN currently working on an acute surgical unit in a large teaching hospital (been there for a little over a year), I also have previous 7 months experience on an orthopedic unit and a few months experience in a nursing home. I LOVE being a nurse despite the stress and I am still working on my time management which has greatly improved over the years. On my unit we get orthopedic overflow, a lot of basic lap appy's and choles, SBO's, mastectomy's, OMFS pts, gastric bypass patients, plastic surgeries (mainly flap) pts and some medicine pts. My unit has a high turnover we usualy don't have pts for more than 4 days besides the select few that end up staying while. I like my unit and am definitely comfortable there. I want to move to a higher level of care to learn more but I am so unsure of where to go... I think I would like to move to a unit with at little more Continuity of care because I love getting to know my patients and being able to talk with them. I am more familiar wth surgical patients and am comfortable with them. I like medicine patients too we just don't get them as often. I've floated to the ED before and I don't think I would like that. And Ive floated to PACU which was cool but also not much of continuity of care. Ive floated to surgical oncology (critical care stepdown unit) I liked it but I could only take regular floor beds so i guess I didn't get much of a feel for it. My main question is how do I find my niche and what I really like ? And any suggestions on where to go? I have a very positive personality (some coworkers on my unit actually call me a fairy), I'm extremely caring and understanding, I like to take time to focus on my patients (which is hard on my unit because we can get up to 6 patients and the turnover is high), I can move quick and I do like to learn, I haven't had very many rapid responses so I get a little shaky in those situations but I am able to handle them, I'm good with IV's and blood draws, I love wound dressings. I've considered possibly moving to BMT or CTICU-stepdown but I am so unsure of where to go! Any suggestions ? Sorry for the long rant. Any advice or descriptions of your units would be much appreciated.