How did you find your "niche"?

dphrn · Apr 23, 2005

I don't think I have found my "niche" yet either. I have been a nurse seven years. I have done med surg, home health, ortho, telemetry and now oncology. I have liked them all and have learned a lot from each area. But, I can honestly say I do not love any one more than the other. I am still waiting to find the area of nursing that I absolutely know is where I am suppose to be.

Rocknurse, MSN, APRN, NP · Apr 24, 2005

I had always wanted to do ICU but never got the opportunity until after about 10 years of nursing. I applied for the job with no experience and from day 1 it was the fit I always knew it was. I can really zero in on my patients and know everything about them, have great attention to detail instead of being spread thin, and they are always interesting because they are so sick. I've learned so much and I'll never do floor work again.

grimmy, RN · Apr 24, 2005

there is a pacu position open in my hospital that i do have a very good chance of getting, and i really do need to give it a shot. maybe i'll like it. i hope that it will be 1:1 care; that's something that i feel like i would really enjoy.
stories, people! how did you find your niche? =)

i was lucky in many ways. i am related to physicians. one year, i think my second in nursing school, during the winter holidays i went to my parent's house, and my sister and her family brought some guests, namely a few surgeons in the practice. well, i took it upon myself to show them around nyc, gave them the big tour, did the shopping thing, etc. while we were having dinner one night, one of them said to me: hey, why don't you come down to georgia and work with us one summer? i thought, this is one of those offers that sounds heavenly, but they'd never expect me to say yes. so i said, "that sounds great." i thought he would forget. he didn't! later that year around april, he calls me up, says, "hey, do you think you can be here in june? i'll set up the Liability Insurance for then, and you can come in with the rest of the medical students." i was flabbergasted, and soooo excited! i'll just say this: i loved the experience so much that i woke up before my alarm clock! :chuckle that had never happened to me before. i knew right then and there that the or was for me. the nurses were great, i loved scrubbing, and the whole atmosphere was perfect for me.

so, having said all that, you need to try things. there's no way i could have known without having gone through the experience. similarly, i knew i wouldn't like a lot of floor nursing because of my experiences in nursing school and as a pct. now, this is not to say that i don't have some yucky days in the or. it happens. but its a yucky i can live with. a yucky day in the nicu i couldn't live with...yanno? besides, you'll find that most of the bad days in nursing are rarely because of patients but because of other team members or patients' families.

leslie :-D · Apr 24, 2005

when i was in nsg school, we each had to do a project/presentation on a specialty we would like to pursue. we were left w/our own devices, no assistance. since i had seen my share of suffering in my day, i always felt that if people had horrible lives, at least they deserved to die with peace. so i called up a reputable hospice agcy, told them i was a sn and could i hang out with one of the hospice nurses for a couple of days. they were more than glad to help me; had me go with one of their top nurses from home to home, and hospitals and that's what got me hooked. there were a couple of things that i disagreed with in the way this nurse spoke and it always stuck w/me. i remember one time, with this end stage ca pt., she was asking the pt about her medication. this pt said that her grandtr was getting married and she hoped that God would give her a little more time so she could attend the wedding. this nurse said "you know you're dying and you don't have much time left so i doubt you'll see your grandtr get married". :uhoh21: i found that a bit too abrasive so i asked her in the car, how she could be so casual about telling people they're dying. she casually (?burn-out) said "they need to accept they're dying".

so yeah, i learned alot, knew it was something i would excel at, and those nurse's words never, ever left me on what NOT to say, esp so insensitively.

leslie

sbic56, BSN, RN · Apr 24, 2005

I think some nurses find a specialty, are great in that area and want to stay there forever, which is great! On the other hand, nursing being the way it is, also suits those, like me, who may be more restless and want to move around and explore different areas. One nurses "niche" may be another nurses rut.

rjflyn, ASN, RN · Apr 24, 2005

Mine kind of started as a child of the 70's. Mine began with the show Emergency- note the signature at the bottom of my posts. Wanted to be a paramedic before there were paramedic's other than LA. SO thats what I did for 10 yrs. Now if you have been a member of this board for any time unless you have been under a rock you have read the posts re nurse wages. Well let me tell you its worse in EMS, fire and law enforcement are only slightly better that medics wages. Not something one can raise a family on- though with the right schedule one can work a second job. SO the natural progression is to ER nursing. All I know that I gained knowledge in nursing school I also found most of the clinicals to be boring, ie same thing day in day out. There is much more variety in the ER.