looking for my niche in nursing

Some perspective ...

Two years in a highly specialized environment like the OR is barely getting your feet wet. It's like the blink of an eye.

Your profile lists your age as 25 -- you likely have another 40-ish years of your working life.

The rest of your decision will need to take into account what you haven't liked about your two nursing positions so far, and how a different nursing specialty or advanced practice will be different.

Your post doesn't make it clear exactly what you are unhappy about. Overwork? Boredom? Maybe you need to do some soul searching to figure out exactly what you do and don't want.

In any specialty, it is a job. It will feel like a job once the newness wears off.

I also get a sense of a vague, generalized unhappiness + fear of stepping outside your zone of comfort =inertia.

Thank you all for your replies...I can't really point my finger on what I don't like about my past and current job...I think it is just the feeling of being stretched thin all the time! Admissions, discharges, and bad assignments in general.

In oncology I would always get assigned the patient that no one wanted..either really sick and unstable or a total care patient that would break your back or 3 RSV patients which required you to do the nurse AND tech work for all 3 because our 1 tech couldn't care for RSV patients and then go into the room of an immunocompromised patient. Or if there was ever a time when one or two nurses (out of the 5 nurses staffed on nights) would have to take an extra patient and be a 4:1 rather than 3:1..it would ALWAYS be me. I left because nothing was changing..as one of the newer nurses I felt dumped on constantly and was tired of it. My friends on that unit who still work there told me that I should be glad I left when I did because it only got worse.

In the NICU I simply feel like the orientation was not satisfactory. 10 weeks of clinical training and 1 week of NICU courses and then you are expected to care for babies who are 400 grams, on nitric oxide, intubated, and trying to die on you all night. I have heard so many girls say that 6 months of training would still be stretching it thin in NICU and many girls who have been there close to year still pray they don't kill anyone! It just scares me..and I like a little bit of unpredictability in a job so that it keeps me on my toes...but I don't like feeling unprepared. And that's every shift for me. I am a good nurse, I worked hard in school and continue to work hard in my practice but I am starting to wonder if this hospital or these units I have chosen are the problem or if it is me.

I really do enjoy nursing..I love helping people, I love learning, I love medicine. I do not love feeling like I am not being supported by my coworkers and team and feeling dumped on. I do not love feeling stretched thin and being afraid of providing unsafe patient care because of acuity or patient assingments. I know I will be leaving my unit..it's just a matter of where to go next.

I want to try OR..I know some things I have complained about are on every nursing unit/specilaity, etc. But I feel like 6 months of training sounds so much more ideal...and having one patient allows me time to focus on that specific person/case/surgery and then moving on to the next. I feel like I can still enjoy the things I love about nursing and maybe leave the other things behind. Does that make sense?

Thanks for listening. :)

In the NICU are you using your resources? I started in the MICU after two years but had my orientation during "slow season," which meant I had NO sickies while I was on orientation. That meant that when I had my first really unstable patient you can bet your butt that I was finding my charge nurse for help every step of the way. It's been a year now and when I see something I haven't seen before or if I have to make a judgement call that I'm not 100% sure of, then I look for the most experienced nurse (or even the doctor if it's a good one) and I ask for help. It just seems to me that the common factor in both of your jobs is a lack of support. I may be naive, or I may be lucky, but I have never worked a job where I felt like I was left in the dark. So make sure you are swallowing your pride and try to identify one nurse you feel comfortable going to for help (it doesn't have to be charge). For the patient's sake the ICU should work as a team, always.