Med-surg for all?

[bjb_wyo]

I am graduating in May. I have visited 3 hospitals and will have interviews with all 3. I am getting very different stories. My local hospital where I have done my clinicals starts all graduate nurses with at least one year in Med-Surg. They say this is the way it is always done.

The other hospital, which is working for magnet hospital status and seems very progressive, starts their graduate nurses in "career pathways" linked to what they are interested in. I am applying for critical care pathway and will interview with telemetry. They say the the med-surg idea is outdated and a new nurse is better off in the area the nurse wants to work in.

I haven't visited the third hospital yet, so don't know what they do.

Any ideas which course is best? Is my local hospital out of date?

[cardiacRN2006, ADN, RN]

Nursing skills such as vital signs, admission assessments, IV insertion and maintenance, care of central lines and PICCs, administration of TPN and lipids, administration of blood products, phlebotomy including finger and heel sticks, venipuncture and arterial sticks, insertion and maintenance of og, ng tubes and gastrostomy tubes, management of ventilators, insertion and management of Foley catheters, developmental care of patients and families. (Sounds a lot like what new grads learn on med/surg, doesn't it?)

Actually, I got way more opportunities to do these tasks when I was doing clinicals in ICU then in med-surg. Especiallly managing families.

As a student in med-surg, families would always, always comment on how nice it was to have someone have to time to talk with them. The floor nurses have too many other tasks/patients to deal with.

My bottom line-I'm already 'pigeon holed" in Critical care because that's what I want to do. I'm ok with this decision, and I'll survive doing only critical care. To all the new grads out there who don't want med-surg, they will never want med-surg. I will never, ever choose to work there. I don't see how a year in med-surg is going to teach you anything but resentment and for some, endanger pt's lives. Some people thrive ther and love it, and some people who hate it.

I still haven't heard a good reason for going there yet.

[wjf00]

I am very happy I never did M/S. So when the Bird Flu hits and they try to float me, I can say sorry I am clueless... and mean it.

[ortess1971]

Actually, experienced nurses will get an extensive orientation if they go into a specialty. My hospital is taking nurses who have been working on the floors, allowing them to "shadow" a circulator and see if they want to work there. They will then send them to a local surgical technology program to teach them to scrub, circulate and the finer points of aseptic technique. After that, they will be on orientation for 1 year(at least). I still say, don't suffer through med/surg if you don't want to work there. It's certainly not going to help you if you want to go to some of the other specialties. So why waste time if you know what your interest is? If you love med/surg, more power to you but that is the beauty of nursing, there are so many different areas.