OB or Med Surg as a new grad nurse

[labor_nurse]

I am entering my final semester of nursing school and wanted to gather some opinions from some of you more experienced nurses...

I love OB nursing, I feel like that is the area where my passion lies. This summer I was lucky enough to do an externship program at my local hospital where I spent 4 weeks working in OB and 4 weeks working on Med Surg (peripheral vascular surgery floor). Surprisingly, I loved Med Surg much more than I thought I would, but I still feel like OB is where I want my focus to be. I'm just wanting to hear your thoughts about what you would suggest for a new nurse - should I go right for a job in OB or go into Med Surg first and get my skills established? My thing is that I don't want to end up spending a few years in Med Surg and forget everything about OB, but I'm also hesitant to jump right into OB because what if years down the road I want to transition into something else and I don't know how to do anything except OB? (If that makes any sense)

One last thing, I know jobs in specialities like OB are probably trickier to get into especially as a new grad, but my hospital hires a lot of new grads and especially externs into OB so I feel like I might have a decent shot at it. Let me know your thoughts!

[SoldierNurse22, BSN, RN]

It sounds like you have a decent setup to get hired into OB right away. If that's what you want to do, I'd say go for it. It is quite possible to develop your skills in a specialty and not start out your career on Med/Surg (I can promise you that from experience!) :)

Good luck!