When/How do you pick your speciality

[UmmAsiyah1211]

Hey Everyone.

My name is Umm Asiyah. I am new to this website, but I love it so much already. I think I am going to become addicted. I am in my 2nd semester of college, and I have decided that I want to become a nurse. A friend referred me to this website. The pre-nursing student forum has answered a lot of my questions, and the best thing was...I didn't have to ask any lol. I have been searching the archives for over an hour now.

Anyway, my question is if I wanted to be an emergency room nurse (which I don't it's just an example) would I have to be 'certified' as such? And this goes for all of the other fields of nursing also. How do you pick which field, do you "test the waters" in nursing school? Do you have to decide before you graduate, or after you graduate, then get 'certified'? Thanks in advance.

Also is there a book that goes into detail about all of the different fields that nurses can go into? I saw the "sticky" thread w/ the websites that explain this, but I really hate reading off of the computer, so a book would be better for me. Thank you guys, and I look forward to participating in discussions with you all.

Umm Asiyah.

[Spacklehead, MSN, NP]

Welcome to the boards! I'll try and answer some of your questions. First, no, you do not have to be certified in a specialty in nursing and, as far as I know, you cannot get certified in any specialty before actually working in that field for a certain amount of time. Many people choose to get certified for personal-satisfaction (which is why I did it). There are hospitals that actually pay more for certified nurses and some actually will pay for their nurses to take study courses and the exam.

You do not need to have a specialty chosen before graduating from your program. Some specialties require a year of some type of nursing experience before you can apply for that position. To get your feet wet while still in school, you could apply for a nursing extern program that some hospitals have and you may get to choose which specialty you would like to extern in. Another path you could follow would be to become a nursing assistant in the unit that you would like to work in as a nurse to see how things run. You could also choose to shadow a nurse in different specialties to see which one is most interesting to you.

There are so many different types of nursing that you will never experience during clinicals in school, so even once you graduate, you might not find your "home" until you have had a few different jobs with different experiences after you become a nurse.

I don't know of a book that I can recommend to you, but I hope the info I provided helps to clear things up a little. Good luck!:)