Experience in Med/Surg or not?

[slou!]

I know they always say to get a year or a couple years of experience in Med/Surg, and I am NO WHERE near deciding where I want to work yet, but I was just wondering something. Now I know they say this to gain experience and in case you don't like a certain specialty you can fall back on your med/surg experience, but say you went straight into a specialty and you hated it after 5 years. Now couldn't you go to med/surg then? 5 years after you graduate and dislike a specialty? What would be the difference of doing it before or after? I also know that med/serg gives you a lot of experience that you can use IN a specialty. So can anyone tell me if there is any more benefits of doing med/surg before or after you dislike a specialty? I mean this is assuming you will even dislike it. I always thought that if I wanted to do a certain specialty, I would want to go right into it if that was possible, and then if I didn't like it or whatever, then do Med/Surg. I am just curious, I don't really need to decide anything until about, oh 3.5 years! I was just wondering. Thanks!

Sorry if this has already been covered, I tried searching and couldn't come up with anything! :)

EDIT: I just wanted to clarify and say that I know med-surg IS a specialty and I have a lot of respect for nurses in this field! I am not saying by any means that it should always just be used as a step to another unit! I also am not saying I will not like it, I have had NO nursing classes or clinicals, so I have NO idea where I want to work! I could change my mind 6 times by the time I graduate! :)

[SuperShopper]

As an experienced nurse, case manager, national health care consultant and now a health care recruiter, I absolutely would recommend a background in M/S or critical care. If a nurse goes into OB, NICU, peds without any acute adult experience, the options as time passes are more limited. One never knows where life might lead and having the adult experience will prove invaluable in many ways.

[pagandeva2000, LPN]

I don't see why this only applies to med-surg, you learn critical thinking, prioritization, time-management, etc. in ICUs and ERs as well. As a nursing student, I was told I needed to get experience in med-surg first too, and I didn't listen to it for a second. In fact, just today I told a soon to graduate nursing student, who was told the same thing, that that is BS and he should go into whatever specialty interests him. There is absolutely nothing wrong with med-surg, but to say that it is a pre-req for other units is just not fair to new nurses who are too naive to know better and would be happier somewhere else.

I have to agree with you, there. Nursing is so broad, and in my opinion, anyone with ICU or ER experience would be able to travel just as far as a person with med/surg.

[4tnerzwife]

I am fortunate enough to have 3 rotations in med/surg. I can honestly say that I have learned the most on these units. This is why I chose to try critical care instead on NICU for my role transition. I agree that it will easier to transition from critical care into peds than vice versa.

[RNsRWe, ASN, RN]

No kidding! I smile to myself when I hear this comment. Who made the rule that only in med/surg can one learn critical thinking, prioritization and time management?

I'd hate to be in an area I didn't want to be in and was just using to go into something else as soon as I could. That's not fair to the med/surg RNs, the pts or me!

Seeing this, I think I want to clarify my post. I don't know that most students today are directed to do M/S first "or else"; there is way too much opportunity in nursing to be singly-focused. However, that said, there really CAN be a limit to what your opportunities are if you don't have any M/S background beyond what you learned in school clinicals. If your chosen area of employment happens to be one in which a M/S background is desirable, preferred (or required), it might help to look at M/S now (while you're still in school) as an opportunity rather than a pit of despair to be avoided

See, when I was in school and doing clinical rotations, I changed my mind after EVERY rotation about "what I wanted to be when I grew up" ! I liked or disliked something about every area I visited and worked in. The one thing I was SURE of, though, was that I absolutely hated M/S: all those tubes and drains and weird mechanisms....ick, not for me. I had decided back then that M/S was NOT important as a start in nursing, since there were so many who told me I could gain plenty of experience in other fields. I, too, didn't "buy into" the idea that M/S was so necessary.

Fast forward a couple of years, and now I feel it's important to let those who are still in school know that while it's not MANDATORY, it sure as heck is an incredible training ground for absolutely anything else you might want to do. Want to work in psych? Great! But don't expect you're not going to have a psych patient with M/S issues...I applied at a hospital with a great psych unit but they, too, preferred applicants with M/S experience as they were a self-contained unit and they definitely had those patients.

I just hope you see the point here: don't close off a M/S opportunity simply because you don't think you'd like it, or think you'd like something else better (but you'd have to wait for an opening there). I thought I'd just survive M/S, and now I really love it :) Like someone's tagline here says, only the foolish and the dead are not open to opinion changes

[rninme]

So they require experience for other specialties but will take someone with no experience into the specialty called med/surg? That makes no sense.

I've decided I'm going directly into what I want if I can find a position, of course, etc. I learned a long time ago to go for what you want and to not dance around. Life is way too short.

LOL....I've never seen a nurse put on a med/surg unit without 6-12 weeks of orientation....depending on past experience, skill level, etc. I am NOT a med/surg nurse...I work ICU and ED....if I get floated to m/s....they have to drag me there. I have enormous respect for the nurses that work there full-time....because I could not do it.

Good luck to you....hope you are able to go directly to your area of interest after you graduate.