Med-Surg Nursing,Not just another dirty job....

[ange26s]

hello all! first i would like to say this thread is not meant to offend anybody,but just give a little personal insight on my feeling about med-surg.i am a new grad working med-surg for about 4wks now.i work 3 12hour dayshifts.when i was in ns i never knew what i wanted to to do.i had friends that just knew they wanted to work mother-baby or pacu,etc. not me! so i made the decision to work med-surg because i felt it would give me a nice foundation and may steer me in the direction of a more specialized area.so with that here i am.i honestly like it.i love being a nurse,i like my patient population,and im just going with the flow.are things perfect? no they are not.we are short staffed,we have some negative people, and it gets tough.im lucky because i have an awesome preceptor.i have taken on 3 patients so far and im building up to 6.what bothers me more than anything is when people say ugly things about med-surg such as "yuck" or "gross" how demeaning is that to my patients? they dont want to be there and when someone says a crude remark about my choice to be a med-surg nurse it upsets me.i have had loved ones that had to be in the hospital on a med-surg floor,and when someone says its a "dirty" floor i feel like they are calling my loved one dirty.and this same feeling i have goes toward my patients.these people are sick and some are dying.i think its great if someone loves what they do for a living and we as nurses need to show eachother respect fo the areas we chose!

[sg2629]

When I was in nursing school I hated med-surg, swore I wouldn't work it and vowed I build my skills some other way. Well, I've been on a med-surg floor for 14 months and, although I can't say I love it, I have seen so much, continually learning something new, and perform skills (now with ease) that I didn't think I'd ever do. I would not trade this experience for anything. But that's the wonderful thing about nursing, we do not know what will tickle our fancy. I'm glad you find your current role fulfilling, keep up the positive attitude!

[earned RN 2008]

I'm also a med/surg RN and I never thought of it as dirty...sure we occasionally have MRSA, pneumonia, c-diff, , etc. but that's where standard, droplet, airborn & contact precautions come into play. And many of our pts are surgical, cva, dehydration, weakness, snf, etc, not people you think of as infectious/dirty. I like it because you see/learn something new almost every shift and get to use your skills (as mentioned by an earlier poster).

What I don't care for is being staffed according to pt census not acuity of the pts, all the charting which takes me away from my pts, never knowing when you might get an admit or if you'll be lucky enough to get the same group of pts two or more shifts in a row. I'm "putting in my time" on med/surg and I'll never regret it.....but I'd like something a little more routine ....preferrably not LTC though.

[Eiano]

I'm not a med-surg RN but I worked as a tech on a med-surg floor for 2 years. Med-surg nurses are some of the best out there. Talk about prioritization!!!! I never thought Med-Surg to be dirty, in fact, the patients were cleaner than when I went onto other units. Med-Surg is a specialty that has its ups and downs. Not everyone can be a M/S nurse. I know I couldn't....