Med-Surg Albatross

[ceebeejay]

I have not worked on a med-surg floor. The only experience I have of it were during my clinicals in school, and I loved it. Of course, I only had two patients at a time.

What is so bad about Med-Surg? By and large, most posts are about how much people hate it. I have seen maybe two responses that say they love it. Is it the nature of med-surg patients, the way that hospitals over burden their nurses with high patient ratios, an ancient nursing curse? Have nurses always dreaded med-surg floors, or is this a relatively new phenomenon?

[HouTx, BSN, MSN, EdD]

MedSurg is the area in which you have to deal with the largest variety of clinical issues in any acute care setting: patients, physicians, etc. "Specialty" areas are much more limited in scope - dealing with a particular type of patient/diagnosis. If you add in telemetry (which is very common on MedSurg units) it is the ultimate nursing challenge.

Many of us really enjoy the variety and find it much more intellectually stimulating than other areas. Different strokes - right? You need to decide for yourself rather than accept the opinions of others.

[ceebeejay]

Thank you the reply. I am not actually making any decision about anything. It's really just a curiosity that I have.

So there's one for too much variation/unpredictability.

[calivianya, BSN, RN]

For me it was too many awake patients. Patients on med/surg are sometimes well enough to constantly want their pillows fluffed and for you to bring them more cups of water, and you may have up to 8 or more of them at once depending on your hospital. Then, they get irritated because you don't show up immediately when they ask you for something. I just don't have patience for that sort of behavior.