Med-Surg??

[LitaSH2891]

i am a nursing student and i am trying to figure out what kind of nursing i want to go into. can someone explain to me what kind of care do u give as a med-surg nurse? if an l&d nurse takes care of women during labor, an or nurse assists in the operating room, what does a med surg-nurse do?

[Tweety, BSN, RN]

"Med-surg" can mean all kinds of medical and surgical patients.

Patients with medical problems include respiratory patients with COPD and pneumonia, GI bleeds, UTI sepsis, AIDS, etc.

Surgical patients are obviously surgical patients. Preop and post op patients can include a wide variety of surgeries, such as the thyroid, the bowel, prostates, gall bladder, orthopedic, etc.

Very often the surgical patient has medical problems too. Or the medical patient becomes a surgical patient, i.e. the GI bleed could be from a tumor that needs to be surgically removed.

It's a great way to learn a lot of multi-system problems and inverventions. I'd recommend it for anyone who is undecided.

Good luck to you.

[stidget99]

Tweety explained it all very nicely I think. I also think that if a new grad wants to get a wide variety of experience before "specializing" med/surg is the way to go. You get all age ranges from 18 - 118. I've talked w/ many who went right into L&D right out of school and regret it because med/surg is now a "scary" thought and regret not doing at least a short stint in med/surg.