hollyann12

I hated med-surg and I moved on quickly. Never regretted it once! Still a nurse, just in a different arena.

I love IV starts. Didn't always, but at my current job I start up to 20 a day. I just love seeing that flash on pt's with difficult veins and I love when I can make their day by getting it on the first try with little difficulty. The other thing I sometimes love is paperwork. Honestly, it's just so nice to sit down every once and a while.

We do informal team nursing at my job (GI). It's one of my favorite things about my job--that you're never truly alone. We help each other out. It's never just my patient; it's your patient too. One of us will check the patient in while the other starts the IV and so on. I never felt this level of team work when I worked in the hospital.

IVs don't scare me at all. I've let many people start them in my hands and arms--I have really good veins but sometimes inexperienced people have trouble even with really good veins. I've personally hit my left AC many, many times and occasionally practiced on my hand. I've even tied a tourniquet around my left arm with one hand but I can definitely do it without. I've never hung fluids on myself; however, I have started IVs on coworkers and hung fluids on them. I am not at a hospital so there are fewer restrictions, I guess. It is not forbidden for us to do so.

If you can somehow make it work financially, I would say go for it! I switched from med-surg nights to endoscopy days about a year ago and I am so much happier. On top of being on days now, having weekends off is amazing and something I never thought I would have in my nursing career. I am still in touch with my old night shift coworkers and most of them love their jobs--but they could see how miserable I was when I worked with them. I didn't exactly love med-surg and our pt population either. Everybody's different. For me, on nights, I was unhappy and felt sick all the time and missed my spouse so much. And I brought that sadness to work with me even though I tried not to. Also, endo is great! I've always wanted to specialize and now I have. Good luck to you. Sometimes it is worth feeling a little poor in order to have mental richness.

I don't really know what to call it because it's not my boss or my co-workers but, every time we get a young, male, hypersexual patient on our floor, he beelines straight for me. I have lived in bad neighborhoods in my life--I've been harassed on the street and still am. But dealing with this day in and day out at work is new to me. Sorry if this is intentionally vague but I don't want to reveal too much of myself... I am not THAT young... I started this job in my late twenties. I have been on this unit for about a year. But I am one of the younger nurses on the floor and also one of the most fit, I guess. My entire life I felt like the ugly duckling, mostly due to a skin condition that has cleared up but I will always feel like that girl, you know? When I was younger and wanted male attention, it was nowhere to be found. Now that I am circling thirty and am engaged, I am perped constantly. And I cry in secret (well, I try to). I want to be glib and coy... I want to let everything roll off me like water off a duck's back. And I want to be immune while still retaining my sensitivity. My co-workers tell me, "Oh, it's just because you're so cute." First off, I am not. Secondly, what has that got to do with anything? And third, all I want to do is crawl out of my own skin... I'm sorry. I'm really just venting here and not looking for any real advice. It's just that every day I get sadder and sadder. I worry about my depression as one of my patients threatens to rape me to a male co-worker. I worry about my sanity. Thanks for listening.