How did you find your niche?

If you arent in nusring school yet it may be hard for you to tell, and certainly too soon to make a decision.

If you think about it you'll probably find there is already an area that interests you.

I wanted to be an ER nurse which was my entire reason for going to nursing school. When doing an internship I discovered the ICU and fell in love with it. Now I love-hate it. :chuckle

Currently I do ICU, ED, and prehospital. Go figure. For me variety is the spice of life-

11

My nitch changes, first was med/surg after nursing school then in 6 months I became an ICU/CCU nurse. That went on for another 2 years then I became a specialty transport team nurse and worked in an ICU with the intensivists that were part of the team. Off to travel nursing for some Trauma and more neuro experience, a bit of CCU and back to the same transport team. Now I work in LTC as a supervisor, staff nurse and reference nurse as the hours are more conducive with having a 14 yo to care for. I am planning to travel again in a few years when my daughter is finished with high school, she wants to travel with me.

I really loved psych during clinical rotations. Critical care was really interesting because I was already a paramedic. I hated OB/GYN, but I was a horse and dog breeder at the time also so....geeze, whats the big deal. LOL.

Good luck and hope you enjoy being a nurse as much as I do

I am a new nurse, graduated August 2004. I went through clinicals and loved it. I still have no clue as to what field of nursing I want to work in. Right now I am working at my first job since graduating. I work in Long term care and I am enjoying it now. Don't know if I'll stay here forever because i want to go back to school next year for RN. Then after that, who knows what I'll be doing?

I trained in the old hospital days, and therefore rotated through every ward and department but one at my training hospital, as well as having specialty placements at other centres.

I found from the beginning that I had more of an affinity for medical nursing than surgical, and found during my external placements that paeds, psych, community health, district nursing, and mid weren't for me. I didn't enjoy radiology, found Cas patients annoying, missed the patient contact in ICU and I hated theatre.

During my staffing year we rotated through a medical, a surgical and a specialty ward; I cheated - my medical and specialty wards were the same;), and here I still am, over a decade later.

You'll get exposure to a variety of specialties in nursing school. Sometimes its easier to find out what you don't like than where you feel you belong. I had a few positions that were a poor fit for me... I left, explored new areas, and now have a job I love.

It's different for everyone. Some go into nursing to work with a specific population (like me with NICU) and others just know they want to be a nurse. When you start your nursing courses and clinicals, you'll get a much better idea of what interests you. Then once you start working, you'll have an even better idea of what you might want to do. The great thing about nursing is that you don't have to decide, ever. You get your RN and then you can do whatever you want because you've trained to be a nurse, period. If the area you were interested in during school ends up not being so great down the road, you can find another job.

Personally, I think when you find an area of nursing that just excites you enough to want to study everything about it, whether it's required for school or not, then you're at least on the right track.