Physical Demand

Most of the shift is standing and walking, with the occasional running to codes, crash calls, etc. Not much lifting to speak of, although I used to work in a hospital with a patient lift team and was tempted to call them some April fools day to help me with a 4 kilo kid...

I'm afraid it's not possible because even if you have feeder-growers, one of them could easily get sick on your shift and cause you to be on your feet doing all sorts of things for them.

The advantage to NICU is that you generally don't have to worry about breaking your back like adult floors where you have morbidly obese patients (from what I've read, no matter how good your lift team is, it's still back breaking work).

You'll have to stand moreso than walking up and down long halls. Very little lifting. Sometimes you have to push/pull beds and equipment around. I've found that if you can't do that, someone else can do it for you since it is a fairly easy, quick task. I say go for the NICU.

I personally think that the NICU is a very gentle place to work. My friends who work on other floors are so physically exhausted at the end of their shift, while I have plenty of time to sit down and hold babies or chart or whatever.

There's very few nursing jobs that don't require lots of standing unfortunately. Especially like other posters said, when you have an emergency you're on your feet the whole shift drawing up meds, taking bloodwork, doing procedures, etc. There's also a lot of contorting your body involved I find. Our single patient rooms are fairly small when you factor in how much room the ventilators, IV pumps, isolette, photo light, etc. takes. One of our RTs sliced his forehead on the metal shelf holding up the transcutaneous monitor while trying to adjust vent settings.

Out of all the units in the hospital, nicu seemed to be the one that was easiest on nurses backs and joints. I think that was one reason many nurses stay there for a while vs adult icu.

NICU is definitely easier on the joints than other types of nursing units. But there are still plenty of shifts where I stand 10-12 hours straight. Even to chart. Might get to sit down for report, maybe. When I work feeder areas, there is a lot more sitting, especially with those slow feeders who take a full 30 minutes to feed.

There is some lifting, but nothing (NOTHING!!) like the adult world (my first 9 years were in the adult world).

I'm in adult ICU right now, and every time I have to turn a patient or transfer them to a chair I get some longing for peds or NICU. Even with good body mechanics it's lifting is not kind to your back. I kind of miss the lift team at another hospital I was at.

I left Labor and Delivery about 10 years ago because of an injury to my C5. While I was out on disability, I was faced with the choice of leaving nursing or changing my specialty. I went into nursing because of my passion (a calling, really) for all things birth. Well, all things birth except those scary little babies that I handed over to NICU nurses, a specialty I knew I never wanted anything to do with!

But, the reality was that I could no longer care for adult patients and if I wanted to remain a nurse, I needed to move to NICU. Because, while I knew it wasn't sit down work, one more injury to my spine and I might be permanently disabled. I was correct that the work, while not easy, is more protective of my spine.

Oh, and by the way, I went in with a determined positive attitude and now, these many years later, I don't miss my first calling and I have a second calling. I love, love, love NICU - the babies, the moms, the dads and my coworkers. I feel so blessed. It didn't hurt that they gave me an awesome retraining. They treated me like the seasoned nurse I was but didn't skimp on helping me to see the differences, both in thought process and practice.

My job isn't strenuous by any means, but most of the time while I'm in a baby's room is spent standing except for while I'm feeding. And if you work in a big spaced out, private room NICU like mine, there is lots and lots of walking back and forth.