Med Surg Question

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Hi Just Decided I Want To Be A Nurse And Have Been Reading This Webiste For The Last Month. Everyone Talks About How After Graduation It Is Good To Go Into Med Surg. What Is Med Surg? What Types Of Patients Are There And What Do Duties Consist Of?

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you might try shadowing a nurse at a local hospital, to get an idea of what different areas of nursing involve.

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Specializes in ER, Infusion therapy, Oncology.

Med/Surg is the medical/surgical floor. You get all types of patients. They are not usually critical, but can be very ill at times. The list of duties is to long to go into on this site. The type of nurse you become depends on what interest you. You will get an idea while in nursing school but the final decision is usually after you actually start nursing. You have a long road ahead of you. I wish you luck.:up:

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Specializes in Neuro, Cardiology, ICU, Med/Surg.
Hi Just Decided I Want To Be A Nurse And Have Been Reading This Webiste For The Last Month. Everyone Talks About How After Graduation It Is Good To Go Into Med Surg. What Is Med Surg? What Types Of Patients Are There And What Do Duties Consist Of?

Hi Kuklara,

Med-Surg nurses can work in a number of environments (even community nursing). Med-surg in a hospital setting is your floor nurse generalist. I work as a PCA (nurse's aide) on a med-surg unit that's mostly surgical in nature, meaning that patients arrive there after having had surgery. We care for them during the recovery of that process and discharge them either to rehab, home, a nursing home or whatever. The medical side (the "Med" of Med-Surg) tends to deal with non-surgical medical conditions, such as heart failure, etc.

The care is wide-ranging, depending on the patient's needs and his/her ability to care for him/herself. There is the passing of meds, helping with general hygiene as needed, helping people get to the bathroom, or ambulate (walk), or just to get to their chair and back to bed. There are a wide variety of procedures, like dressing changes, irrigation of various tubes and orifices, and of course, the occasional bedpan or other bodily excretion management.

Before I started nursing school, I might have thought that giving meds was easy, -- my pharmacology professor said, you can train a monkey to give pills-- but the nurse needs to have a thorough knowledge of medications... why they're being given, when they should be withheld, what common side-effects they cause and how meds interact with other meds. We're the ones at the bedside who can assess what's going on and intervene on a timely basis if something goes wrong.

The med-surg nurse does a lot of vital signs-taking (though is often helped out by aides with this task, as with the hygiene-related tasks).

Drains are drained and measured. Fluid intake and output is measured.

Anyway, these are some of the tasks of the med-surg nurse. I love my unit and plan to work there as a nurse when I finish school this spring. Many people say that it's a good thing to work med-surg before going to specialize in another unit.. some people disagree with this. I'll add that time spent working med-surg won't be wasted, because you will have a chance to develop a wide-variety of nursing skills. The acuity of patients on my unit are equivalent to those of some in ICU's in other hospitals, so a lot depends on your unit. If you want to specialize in ob/gyn, for example, it probably won't be as helpful to spend a lot of time working med-surg before going to work maternity. Of course, if you can't find a job in maternity when you graduate, then the med-surg experience won't hurt you.

Hope this helps, and good luck on your journey!

Karl

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I've been working med-surg for past 10 years, and I love it. The patients consist of all those patients that have had surgery that need to stay overnight postop or longer with the exception of those on a heart monitor. That's the surgical part of med-surg. Medical patients are those with pneumonia, abd pain and n/v, wound infections, impactions (severe constipation), comfort care awaiting hospice, patients that need to be medically evaluated prior to nursing home placement, elderly with decreased LOC, patients with low Hgb (from Dr.'s office) that need blood transfusions, etc., etc.

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Specializes in Emergency, Trauma, Flight.
Med/Surg is the medical/surgical floor. You get all types of patients. They are not usually critical, but can be very ill at times. The list of duties is to long to go into on this site. The type of nurse you become depends on what interest you. You will get an idea while in nursing school but the final decision is usually after you actually start nursing. You have a long road ahead of you. I wish you luck.:up:

uhh...

well.......

perfectly said!!!

med/surg is everything all mixed together...

it will give you an idea of what type of nurse you want to be....

:cool:

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Specializes in Emergency, Trauma, Flight.

hey.. cityhawk... karl....

uhhh... can i make a suggestion?

you need to freaking go to nursing school...

it sounds like to me that you are already half way there...

you would make an excellent nurse.......

you are a freakin rockstar!!!!

keep up the good work man!!

seriously... you are really awesome!!!

my girlfriend is laughing @ me as we speak...

she agrees!!

do it...... i think you would make a great nurse!!

i would even help get you into a program if ya need it...

:cool:

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