Which specialty/area is your externship in?

[jaimealmostRN]

Hey everyone,

Well tomorrow (today) I start my first day of orientation for a summer externship in Telemetry. I cannot sleep, it's about 2:20am here. My true love is emergency nursing but this hospital does not offer an externship in their ED. I figured I'd get some great med-surg skills along with being more comfortable with rhythms and cardiac drugs on this unit. Which areas is everyone else working in? Is this the area in which you will work when you graduate? I'm really hoping that they will let me do a lot of skills such as NGTs, foleys, dsg changes...I figure that I'll try to give my precepting nurse a "vacation day" and just let him/her guide me thru each skill, calling for x-ray/dr. or whatever. Good luck to everyone!

[Saved_by_Grace]

Are your externships set up through your schools, or are you doing them on your own?

[christinemj]

My internship is "on my own." It is a paid position at the local hospital and is completely independent of the nursing school..........

[klone, MSN, RN]

Are your externships set up through your schools, or are you doing them on your own?

Ours are done through the local hospital. It really doesn't have anything to do with the schooling, but they do come to the school and talk to the second semester students and pass out applications there. The school and hospital work very closely together WRT training students (it's a small town with ONE school and ONE hospital).

[Jen2]

I am in my third of four weeks in my externship on a trauma unit. I really love the trauma unit. The patients we get usually come straight from the ED or ICU. It has been a great learning experience so far. After I am done on the trauma unit I go to the ED, which is where I eventually want to end up and maybe even do life flight. However, at this point I think I will be totally happy as a GN on the trauma unit. I am not brave enough to go to the ED as a GN or new nurse and it's really hard to get that kind of position as a new nurse anyway.

[sagelola]

WannabeLPN2005...our externships are found on our own. They are a paid position through the hospital that you have to apply for, interview for, and then it is just like a job. However, at our school we also have to be enrolled in Nursing 50, which is Work Study, at all times while working the externship. This way, though, you also earn a few credits every semester.

[Saved_by_Grace]

cool. thanks for the info! good luck in your externships~:)

[nurseshanti]

I'm doing my "externship" (we call it a co-op job here) on the Detox unit at the local psych hospital. It wasn't my first choice of positions but I was number 58 on a list of 60 chosen nursing students and so I didn't get my first couple choices. My job starts in about 2 weeks, once my summer clinical is finished. I'm having mixed feelings about the unit. I'm not really interested in going into mental health nursing. But I do think that I'll have a very good learning experience nonetheless, as long as I keep my mind open and my eyes and ears sharp for learning opportunities. Plus, in my experience in clinical so far, there are many people with addictions who get physically sick from other things and who are on med/surg units for other things, so I figure the more I understand about caring for people with addictions, the better prepared I'll be for caring for those patients on "regular" units.