Choosing an area of work.

Shotzie · May 2, 2004

There is no right or wrong answer. It's all about what you want. Pick whichever one you think you might like and if it doesn't work out you can always choose another area.

That's the beauty of nursing.

jemb · May 2, 2004

What Shotzie said.

But I will add that if you are uncertain about the choice, and if you're not sure you will like maternity, go with med-surg. Reason being is that if you start in maternity and find that you don't like it, the transition to another area will be more difficult since you will have experience only in a specialized area.

If you start in med-surg, you will have exposure to many different areas and many different 'types' of patients --cardiac, dialysis, renal, oncology, ortho, etc. You may float to maternity from med-surg, but the opposite will not happen (unless you work in a very small facility where everyone is crosstrained to every area eventually).

In other words, if you start in maternity , you may get stuck there even if you don't like it. If you start in med-surg, you can go just about anywhere once you decide what you like.

SCRN1 · May 2, 2004

I started out in Labor & Delivery. While I did enjoy this area, I wish I had started out on a Med-Surg floor. You will learn much more once you actually start working as a nurse than you did in nursing school. As time went on & I worked in a Peds office, took a couple of years off away from nursing, and then back to a hospital, I decided to work on an Orthopedic floor which gets LOTS of overflow Med-Surg patients. I knew I needed to go into an area like this because it had gotten to where I felt I'd forgotten a lot of what I learned in school about things other than OB. If I'd gone straight to Med-Surg after graduating, I think I would've had an easier time. Still, things have come back to my memory amazingly fast.