after med surg ...

Ruby Vee, BSN · Dec 12, 2018

well, i been a medical/surgical nurse for about 5 years now... looking for a change. my volunteer experience in the emergency room brought me into the nursing field, so i want to spend the rest of my years there... or maybe the ICU. but moreso the ER.
what do i do next? move to the telemetry unit? go straight into ER?
what classes do i/should i take? i'm not too great with IV starts. the place is a level 3 trauma. any advice is appreciated. thanks all~!

After five years of Med/Surg, you can probably transfer anyplace you want to transfer. If you want to go to ER, apply there. Seriously. You already know how to be a nurse, how to talk to physicians and patients and families and ancillary services. You have enough experience to be a valuable employee in any specialty. There will be a learning curve, and you will have to study at home. But go for it! Let us know how it goes.

Jedrnurse, BSN, RN · Dec 12, 2018

I'm curious about your 'maybe' with ICU. It's nothing like the ER; did you have an ICU experience as well that makes you interested?

medteleER · Dec 13, 2018

I'm curious about your 'maybe' with ICU. It's nothing like the ER; did you have an ICU experience as well that makes you interested?

Not sure if this is going to make any sense, but the ICU is where I (being a med/surg nurse) transfers/transferred all of my patients requiring a higher level of care...other than the telemetry.

Sometimes, I want to be the receiving end of that. Personal growth.

Yitong_RN · Dec 16, 2018

I worked in med-surg/neuro-tele for the same amount of time. I did a critical care internship, but it wasn't exactly what I expected. I went from night shift on the regular floor to day shift ICU...OMG so much more work, and so much more required specificity. I was used to treated patients on a long-term basis where I needed to comprehend treatment in a big-picture way, but in ICU everything had to be JUST RIGHT. I wasn't used to that. On more than one occasion, I thought I'd enjoy the ED for the focused stabilization, then ship them upstairs kind of thing. I had a terrible preceptor in ICU, but that's beside the point. I want to address your concerns.

I work on a cardiac tele unit now that necessitates more specificity than my former med-surg job, but def not as much as ICU. I like that.

As far as classes, I would recommend a full residency if you transfer to ICU. If they offer you just a straight transfer with a two week orientation, don't do it. A good residency should have a lot of in-house education to go with it. As for IV starts, just try to do as many IVs as you can. Ask your coworkers to let you do their IVs. Ask for altered pts that pull their IVs lol...maybe. It's possible you could shadow in another department that does a lot of IVs like med-day or with the PICC team; you could completely concentrate on that without having to be anyone's primary nurse.

Good luck!