new nurse, start in med surg or critical care intership???

[angc513]

Hello Everyone.

I graduated in June and passed boards in October. (yay) I would eventually like to get into critical care or emergency nursing. Should I start of in med/surg or go ahead and jump into the critical care internship program? I hear so many different things that I am kind of confused on what to do. A lot of critical care internships only take new grads, so let's say I work med surg for a year then want to do critical care or ED, how does that work?? Will they just transfer me to the unit and train me there?

If you think I should start with med/surg what kind? There are so many sub specialties of even med surg now days that I am not sure where to start. Cardiac, oncology, surgical, transplants, the list goes on. It is hard to find a general med/surg. So what do you all recommend???? Also is it true that if I am interested in Emergency nursing that I should do more of a medical floor?? So many rumors and opinions, please help!

Angela

[Anagray, BSN]

Where you should go probably depends on how you learn and your personality type. For me med surg was the right choice, because I learn best in an organized, consistent environment. I need to read first, then do a hands on activity. I a busy ER like mine it is just impossible to do. On med-surg I recieved personal attention and a really great orientation. In ER our preceptors have a patient load of 5-8 patients as well as a new grad to train.

From my med-surg expreience I've gathered a huge amount of information, perfected my skills, got charge expreience and when I came to the ER all of it was just icing on the cake. For the cake part i had to go to critical care classes and take ACLS and PALS.

Some new grads do really well in ER. Shadow in places where you want to go and speak wth other nurses who are new. See how they like it.

Good luck!!

[angc513]

Thank you for the advice. Do you have a suggestion as far as which type of med surg to do? Does it matter if the floor is mostly all medical or all surgical?? Or a floor with telemetry?

[Larry77, RN]

Tele would probably be better than plain ol' med/surg...the rhythm interpretation would be useful in both critical care and ED. I did surgical floor myself and it helped with blood administration and pre-op but not anything to do with rhythms.

[mmutk, BSN, RN, EMT-I]

You should also shadow and what not to determine if you want ER or ICU, because there is a big difference. I am a big believer in you are either the ER type or the ICU type and your training will suit you better in which you choose.

[TraumaNurseRN]

ER demands autonomy and a good sense of organizational/time management mind-set. (Not that other units don't but I feel in the ER and then treat and streets along with the acuity it's a different bird than anywhere else). Many days I would rather have 3 high acuity patients than to have the treat and streets only to be doing initial assessments all day long for people who shouldn't even have come to the ER.

[bisacat]

Hi,

I graduated last December. I went into a new nurse program which included only 6 wks of med surg and then I started an ER internship. The internship was 2 clinical days with a preceptor and 2 classroom days. I think (and hope) I made the right choice!