L&D/CNM: tell me everything!!

[hillary1992]

Prospective ABSN student. Because this is a second career I'm more focused on what area of nursing I want to go in to (with the caveat that I could start school and find something else that I love even more).

Leaning heavily towards narrowing in on women's health and potentially going on to do a Nurse-Midwife advanced degree.

L&D nurses and CNW: tell me everything! Do you like it? What do you not like? What would you tell a prospective new student? What I should know about this niche? How did you find yourself in this specialty?

[queenanneslace, ADN, MSN, APRN, CNM]

These are such huge and broad questions. Tell you EVERYTHING? I don't know where to start.

How about I ask you a question. :)

What interests you about women's health and midwifery? What questions do you have about this point in your education and your career planning?

It sounds like you are in the pre-nursing phase of your training. This is what I would tell a pre-nursing student (or new nursing student) who is interested in midwifery:

You will learn lots of things that have NOTHING to do with women's health, pregnancy, birth, contraception, newborns. They're valuable things to know - but it won't seem that way. I can remembering trying to CARE about chest tubes. It took me a while to appreciate the value of the broad general education base of nursing.

[James75]

I finished my ABSN in December, and started as an L&D nurse in February, came off orientation in the last few weeks.

Like you, I was planning on specializing in women's Health. I had been a doula and a childbirth educator and had almost gone to get a doctorate in medical anthropology with a focus on childbirth practices.

I was still so grateful to get a broad exposure to health. I was quite surprised to find how much I enjoyed trauma and emergency nursing, especially. I think I could be quite happily working on those floors. And through it all labor and postpartum remained my passion. So while I'm happy to have broader nursing knowledge, because it does come up, I'm also so so happy to be working with laboring moms every day. I was actually "better" at med surg, but the worst day on Mom Baby or L&D was better than the best day on Neuro or Ortho.

I was really afraid I'd have to put in some time on a Med Surg floor before specialty, but I applied to a hospital about an hour outside of the major city I live in (2 hours in some traffic) and was hired onto a great unit. The commute sucks, but to me it was worth it to start out where my passion truly lies.

It can be hard watching some of the non evidence based practices, like valsalva pushing (especially when we didn't do them where I was a student - an even more high risk facility), but I plan to join our practice council to push for more evidence based practice and from everything I've seen so far management is very open to improving.

Still, I wonder how long I can last before I go back for my CNM. Mom Baby Nursing isn't enough excitement for me, but I do miss all the education and the chance to walk a little farther with the family on their journey. I also want the chance to meet them prenatally, know them better and direct their care (so my choices can be respectful of their goals and wishes as well as evidence based). But for now I'm just getting my feet under me as a baby nurse.

I got my first shoutout from a patient the other day and it was so amazing to read how I was able to keep her feeling calm and safe in an emergency situation. I love my job!

So - is that "everything" enough for you?