Med Surg v.s. Pediatrics Nurse! Help!

Double-Helix, BSN, RN · Jan 25, 2017

I'm glad you're excited and planning for your future, but this is what they call putting the cart before the horse.â€ Your first steps need to be to apply to nursing school (preferably a BSN program, and one with a capstone/practicum in your final semester). Take prerequisites, take your nursing courses, and learn more about the professional and the various career opportunities available to you (there are more than you can fathom). You cannot, and should not, choose a specialty before completing your nursing education and passing your licensure examination. In order to be competent you must establish a wide base of knowledge in all areas of nursing care. After you have exposure to nursing practice, you can decide if you want to pursue greater exposure to a specialty area during your senior practicum. You may find that you have no interest in areas of nursing that currently appeal to you, or that you do have an interest in others that you current don't know exist.

P.S. Pediatric nurses work in far more environments than doctor's offices.

Sour Lemon · Jan 25, 2017

Hello, all! I am still in high school, but I know I want to become a nurse when I'm older, hence my recent joining of his page; I'm also going to be going to take night college classes to get my CNA license, but besides the fact, I'm interested in both Med Surg and Pediatric nursing but not sure what one I want to specialize in? I love working with children, neonatal would be amazing, no, not because of the "cute babies", but because dealing with premature newborns, babies with birth defects, and so on is interesting to be, but the whole pediatric spectrum is very intersting, but I don't want to work in a doctors office giving shots all day to adolescent children; it would get quite repetitive, and boring. I would much rather prefer working in the ER area, the actual hospital section, this is where Med Surg comes in, it seems as it's never a dull job, and I love everything it involves, pre-op, and post-op help, and including medicine, which are also my extreme interests! So, if a Med Surg or Pediatrics Nurse could comment, maybe their day in the life, I know, this post doesn't really make much sense, but I'm in a crossroads! Thanks everybody!

Assuming you're in the USA, school (and passing boards, of course) will prepare you to apply for an entry level position in a variety of specialties. There is no need to decide anything at this point.

jessimee · Jan 25, 2017

As a new grad, I worked as a pediatric med-surg nurse. I loved it but it was challenging as a new grad. We cared for all pediatric surgical patients in the hospital--everything from appendectomies to neurosurgeries, to urologic surgeries and orthopedic surgeries. Medical diagnoses included anything but cardiac or oncology. Everything from new type 1 diabetes, kidney failure (peritoneal dialysis), trauma/abuse, brain injuries, burns, to respiratory disorders, and septic neonates. Much of pediatric nursing involves educating and reassuring anxious parents. So you have to enjoy both kids and adults!

Gr4ceffa, CNA · Jan 25, 2017

Double-Helix,

Thank you for your comment, it truly helped! I'm going to be going for my BSN once graduating from high school! Thank you, once again! I really appreciate it!:)

Gr4ceffa, CNA · Jan 25, 2017

jessimee,

Thank you so much for your comment, it helps and gives me a look into what you do(did)! I thinking becoming a Pediatric MedSurg is what I want to specialize in, but still have plenty of time before I graduate nursing school because of me still being in high school! Thanks again!

TheCommuter, BSN, RN · Jan 25, 2017

Moved to the Pediatric Nursing forum for more replies.

la_chica_suerte85, BSN, RN · Jan 26, 2017

So, we're going from NICU to Gen Peds to ED to, I'm guessing, Adult Med-Surg? It's a little all over the place.

I second the idea that you might be getting ahead of yourself with setting your sites on a specialty during high school. A lot of these things are interesting in theory but once you get to nursing school, depending on what clinical sites you rotate at, your experience could end up souring you on all these specialties and turning your interest towards others.

I'm a pediatric hematology/oncology RN. This was the only specialty that spoke to me, even though during my fundamentals term, I swore I would never do this. My fundamentals instructor is a hemonc RN and her stories just seemed too sad, too terrible, why would I want to do it? I was very wrong and I'm so glad I was.

A day in the life? It's hard to describe. I can have a very chill night where everything is going smoothly and no one needs anything or have an utter shift from hell where I can't keep up and my very intellectual abilities are in question. Even though I'm in peds hemonc we are kind of a mix of med-surg with some mild critical care thrown in. I'm on a floor that deals largely with solid tumors (as opposed to the "liquid" tumors of leukemia and lymphoma). Because of this, we see amputations, functional deficits, cognitive deficits, wounds, drains, etc. It's still pretty med-surgish. Night time is chemo time so it's a lot of being nosy and looking through all the patient's data like urine specific gravity, blood counts and kidney and liver function. We discover a lot of things that day shift didn't have time to go through and help pass on things that might otherwise get missed. It's a lot of coordination with pharmacy for time-sensitive chemos. It's a lot of pre-meds, monitoring, assessing, reassessing, and medicating for nausea, pain and allergic reactions. It's lab draws from central lines (super fun and totally not frustrating on wiggly 3 year olds who. just. won't. go. to. sleep!) and checking those labs to see if anything unusual is going on. It's charting, charting, charting. Document this. Document that. Write a note on this, call the doctor on that, chart that you called the doctor and chart after you assess your interventions. Call the doc when the intervention didn't work and chart that, too. Chart, chart, chart. Have hour-long conversations with parents of kids who have been newly diagnosed about what we've seen, what they can expect, when certain side effects are going to occur, encourage them on how much of a good job they are doing, let them know that what they are feeling is normal, every thing that is happening is normal. I let them know it's okay, that we understand when they lash out at us. I help support them when they are petrified with tear-streaked faces as we get ready to transfer to ICU for a bad reaction or overwhelming sepsis. Then, go catch up on a charting and get report ready for oncoming day shift. And, then double check to make sure all the charting is done.

After you graduate high school, start college and begin to go through the pre-nursing process, you should try to see if you can find a hospital to shadow at. Contact the peds instructor at whatever school you are hoping to go to for nursing (it might not be the same college you start at) and see if they can link you with a unit that is willing to take people who wish to shadow. Then, repeat that process for a med-surg experience.

I'm also aware that there are some colleges that have a pre-nursing track. In other words, if you meet certain criteria (GPA and certain core sciences), you can get yourself a tentative spot in a program. Once you get into that school, you focus on meeting all your pre-reqs and you have a direct entry into the program (i.e. no crazy competition to deal with because you have a spot waiting for you). This is hard to get into and, to be honest, you may shadow somewhere or start working as a CNA and decide this is something you really want to do. This is hard work. It changes you for both the good and the bad. While I am completely in love with what I do, there will come a time where I will have to remove myself from the suffering and the misery and move on to something else. It will still be nursing-related, but, if only there were office jobs that actually hired RNs to just give adolescents shots all day that paid a living wage. I would take that job in an instant.

I am tired. I am older (I started my 2nd bachelor's, my BSN, when I was 27) and, while I would like to think that I would have had more energy back in the day to deal with all of this, I know that I lacked the emotional maturity to truly meet the demands of the job. Nursing isn't just doing task-oriented work where we take care of people. It's confronting the misery and suffering of the human condition, it's seeing people, children, at the life's end, it's seeing parents leave the hospital with a bleeding hole in their hearts that will never heal, it's being responsible for trying to do what you can to help ease that suffering, knowing sometimes you can't. It's giving medicine that you know will make a kid so sick that they will end up in the ICU because of the side effects being so severe. It's knowing too much. But, it's also having great coworkers who have your back and are willing to teach and work side by side, encouraging you the whole way, making you want to be your best self for them and the patients. Nursing gives and it takes, it takes and takes some more. You're young. You have opportunities to do things that might give a little more than they take. Work-life balance can be very tricky in nursing. There's a lot of burnt out people in this forum. It is profoundly rewarding but there are other choices, too.

Good luck in your journey!

Gr4ceffa, CNA · Jan 26, 2017

la_chica_suerte85,

Thank you for your comment, I do realize that nursing is extremely hard and emotionally and physically draining, but I've been sure about becoming a nurse for as long as I can remember. I'm going to be taking night classes at a local college to get my CNA license, then branch off from there! Thanks again!

Wolf at the Door, BSN · Jan 27, 2017

wish i could go back to high school.