Separating Gynecology from OB nursing: Is it time?

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Specializes in Consulting, Nursing Informatics.

Do you think that gynecological nursing should become its own specialty in nursing? These two specialities have always been linked but in my experience, there is an enormous difference between OB nursing & GYN nursing.

For one thing, the demographics of the US population is shifting and more women are entering menopause and perimenopause than ever before. Thanks to the aging of the baby-boomers, there is a dire need for comprehensive care for women beyond child-rearing years, and it doesn't seem fitting for a general OB-GYN nurse to care for a woman in menopause undergoing specialized care.

So what do you think-separate OB from GYN nursing or keep them together?

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What jobs are out there for Associate Degree Nurses, everywhere want B.S. degrees!

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Just a note to the previous poster... might be wise to change your screen presence to something that cannot be immediately identified. Hope your current is not your real name!

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Specializes in Ante-Intra-Postpartum, Post Gyne.

No.

Maybe this is because I work in a rural hospital. I can be taking care of a labor patient once night; and have two or three couplets and a post-TAH the next. In my world they are not totally separate.

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Specializes in Med/Surg, Ortho, ASC.

At my hospital, the GYN patients are not lumped in with Mother/Baby....I've actually never heard of that. Ours recover on a urogynecological unit that is part of a Med-Surg floor.

I have wondered if there might be a little bit of movement on the part of some MD's (especially those close to retirement) to separate themselves from OB (hellish malpractice premiums) and practice only gynecology and gyecological surgery. Personally, as one of those perimenopausal baby boomers, my strong preference is to see someone who practices only as a gynecologist....no eternal wait for office visits due to someone going into labor.

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Specializes in Med/Surg, Ortho, ASC.

"What jobs are out there for Associate Degree Nurses, everywhere want B.S. degrees!"

To Marjorie Yarnell:

You might want to start your own thread. Your post appears to be hijacking a completely unrelated thread.

Better yet, search around and spend some time reading here. There are lots of existing threads about finding jobs, ADN or BSN.

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I agree that being able to treat with a gyn only is attractive-but I wonder, the way that hospitals are consolidating units, floating staff-if OB-GYN should continue. As a student, gyn was handle during med-surg section...

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Specializes in Emergency.

In my hospital, OB & gyn are contained to mother/baby and surgical areas, respectively. The clinic however... I'd love to see it separated. I get rather tired of having a 3 month wait to get in. And children/babies give me anxiety, so sitting in the waiting room can almost get me to full on panic attack mode if I'm there too long.

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Specializes in Specializes in L/D, newborn, GYN, LTC, Dialysis.

Not necessarily. In smaller hospitals like mine, we will ALWAYS be taking GYN surgical patients as well as OB patients. That is not about to change. I don't find it all that hard to keep on it all. Besides, OB patients are getting older, much older and GYN surgical pts are young....some in their 20s.

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Specializes in NICU.

I did my last semester preceptorship on a strictly women's health unit. The only OB involved was pregnant patients being treated for something non-labor related. Mostly gyn cancers and TAH's.

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Specializes in Community, OB, Nursery.

We take overflow GYN pts as well, and sometimes we take the less complicated med-surg pts too - choles, pyelo, etc. (who sometimes turn out to be more complicated than we expect....oh well). Personally, I think it's good to keep the specialty more or less combined.

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I work on postpartum and we routinely get GYN post-ops - mainly because it's more convenient for the doctors to do rounds. We are also "associated" with (as in we have to share staffing, and are located next to) pediatrics, so it's not uncommon for some of the peds patients to be 60 year old hysterectomy patients!

Also, they try to admit any pregnant patient to our L&D department - even if the reason she's there has nothing whatsoever to do with her pregnancy. They had the ER call with a patient presenting with SOB who was 24 weeks. The nurse who took the call asked if she was in labor? No. Cramping? No. Bleeding? No. Decreased fetal movement? No. The nurse politely suggested that they call respiratory therapy to treat her symptoms and call back if they needed to obtain fetal heart tones...

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