Looking for a word on periop. care... or choosing specialties in general!

[PlourdieRN]

First off...I am a bright and shiny nursing student who has nothing but optimism about my future career in health care!

With that said, I'm also open-minded and I don't want to make premature decisions about what field I want to enter into before I've had experiences across the board.

For example, I've always thought I would prefer to work primarily with women or children but today in class we discussed perioperative care and I was instantly intrigued!

And now I'm wondering how I will be able to know where I want to go when I graduate. All I've heard is that most new grads should get onto a med/surg floor for at least a year before moving on to another specialty... but will I get a chance to "try something out" before I commit?

And also... any words on perioperative care? It sounds challenging and interesting... but I am a bright and shiny nursing student, what do I know?!

[sicushells, RN]

i have a few thoughts on choosing a specialty out of nursing school...

1) if you KNOW you don't want to do med-surg, then apply for jobs in areas that sound interesting

2)knowing a few periop nurses... if that's the only thing you want to do, go for it! otherwise, try something at the bedside. a coworker of mine was an OR nurse for 3 years and then came to the ICU. she hadn't even used a stethoscope since school! so you can imagine the transition was difficult.

3) the economy is rough, get what you can get.

4) straight out of school, any experience you get is going to be the first experience, and will color your practice throughout your career. I think it's more important to get experience in an environment where you'll get a really good orientation, lots of support from your manager and coworkers, and hopefully have someone to vent to when work sucks, and being a new nurse is overwhelming (which passes, but the process can be rough)