How do I know what floor I'll like?

[JCD2712, BSN, RN]

I've been in my current position on a tele obs floor for 10 months (7 months off orientation). At my hospital there's a 15 month requirement for positions, so I can transfer floors if I want in March.

Anyway, for awhile I felt like I was in the groove and was really digging things. I thought if I kept my current schedule (3 nights in a row) then I would stay on my floor forever. I really like my coworkers and we had safe ratios and life was good.

More recently, things have gotten crazy and morale is in the toilet. We've been chronically understaffed and are given too many patients too quickly, we've become a true overflow floor, yadda yadda yadda....you know how it is.

So I'm thinking of leaving my floor but I don't know where to go. How do new nurses know what floors they like? What's the best way of figuring out where to go? How do you know when to leave bedside or the hospital altogether? Any tips would be greatly appreciated!

[Nurse SMS, MSN, RN]

Take a look back at your favorite days at work. A few will probably stand out to you. Then take out a piece of paper and write yourself a list of what things made that particular shift so great. Was it the teamwork? The kinds of patients you saw? You got free food?

Then look back at your top 5 favorite patients, the ones that stick in your memory. Really examine what about caring for those people made you feel good. Wound care? Pain management? Got them up to ambulate? Helped them have a good death? Write it down.

Then look at your lists and you will have an idea where your tastes and passions lie.

Any time you change jobs it is a gamble, but doing the above will at least give you a direction to look.

When I changed from my first floor, I did some shadowing shifts on other units. I also volunteered to be floated, so I could find out what other units felt like and dealt with. You could do that or just straight up join the float pool, to get experience on different units.