Med Surg or Peds

Nurses General Nursing

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I was just wondering what nurses and students, past and present thought Med Surg or Pediatrics was harder.. both lecture and clinical...

It seems like the nursing students who are in peds and already done with med surg at my school seem to think peds is a harder class!!

What's your opinion?

Specializes in mental health, military nursing.

Peds is harder. It takes the foundation of med/surg, and then builds upon it. Med/surg is kind of "basic nursing," where pediatrics is a specialization.

Specializes in being a Credible Source.

The only reason that peds was a little more challenging is because it opened up a whole new range of normal and that it keeps changing as they get older. For example, there's not just one normal range of VS, there are 5 (as I recall).

An infant is very different from a toddler who's different from a preschooler who's different from a school-age kid who's different from an adolescent. They all have different psychosocial needs, abilities to understand, and appropriate means of communication education.

Kind of like oncology is a very general term to describe myriad conditions, pediatrics actually covers a number of disparate groups of people.

Med-surg was also easier in that I found it helpful to use my own body and experiences as a mnemonic aid and to facilitate comprehension. For those folks without kids, they've got no frame of reference.

I think even though I'm looking forward to Peds, I think it'll be more challenging then Med-Surg, not just because it's building on the Med-Surg information, but because I don't have kids, and there are alot of variations from the newborns to adolescents... I just hope I can enjoy it and learn at the same time.. because I think Peds is where I should be.

PEDS was much harder. As stated in a previous post, PEDS have more normals! I left MED SURG I with an A and would sweat every time for my PEDs exam! Now I’m going into Med-surg 2 ...I think my hardest challenge will be 90 clinical hours in 5 weeks and 5 exams! Haha..but feel better than when I was heading into PEDS. I thought it was gonna be a fierce class and I was right! Passed with 85 but WOW! is an understatement!

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