New England transplants

[bousue]

Hi, being from New England we see lots of pneumonia, bronchitis, upper respiratory infections, etc. I was curious, in Florida do you see this often or does the wonderful sunshine take care of it? What do you see a lot of for illnesses?

[NurseguyFL]

Depends on where you will be working. If you're in peds you will see a lot of trauma cases (mostly minor fractures) and URIs. However, if you'll be working with adult patients you're going to see a huge med surg overflow (even if you're working in tele or ICU). Most of them will be older adults, quite a few snow birds around this time of year and well into the spring, and also many regulars who are brought in from retirement communities and nursing homes---some come in often enough that you will begin to remember their names without even looking at their paperwork.

Sorry, but the wonderful sunshine doesn't really take care of anything. Many of these older patients have multiple comorbidities and they tend to come into the hospitals more frequently and stay longer. They usually have some type of neuro (often stroke) or cardiac history so the admitting MDs will send them to a tele floor even if they are really med surg cases. Pneumonia is very, very common in the patients who come from the nursing homes, and quite a few of them will be total care patients with varying degrees of dementia .