Stress level on a neuro floor

[ruralgirl08]

I have been working on a neurology/neurosurgical floor for the last 6 mos., I previously did a year of med-surg before this. Do you find neuro to more stressful then med-surg? I have noticed there are a lot more stressful pt/family issues to deal with on neuro, and there seems to be a lot more back injuries, compared to other floors. Have other people noticed this?

For those that know, how would you compare the stress level of working on neuro compared to working in the ICU?

[optimistic_newgrad]

I will be starting the UCLA New Grad Program in Feb and I was hired onto their neurosurgery unit. I am so excited because this is my dream unit. UCLA's offers a year long new grad program which I am happy about because I know it is a difficult unit to work on. I ordered a book to read in the mean time to, Clinical practice of Neurological and Neurosurgical Nursing. If anyone has any advice to help me out as a New Grad, it will be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advanced.

[KSGMaine, ASN]

I was just reading your post from August 11 - I am a new grad and just started my first nursing job and it's on a neuro/trauma/ortho unit. I too am feeling a bit overwhelmed and unsure of my skills - I feel like I don't remember anything from nursing school, even the basics like positioning, assessments, etc. So far everyone has been helpful, but for some reason today I feel like others might be talking behind my back - I just finished 3 overnight shifts, so I could just be tired....my unit educator says everything is fine and she's heard good things, so maybe I'm just paranoid. Any suggestions or words of widsom to help this new grad is greatly appreciated.

K

[KelRN215, BSN, RN]

I think neuro is more stressful than many other units of the hospital just because it's neuro. In neuro you have your fresh post-ops who are possibly needing some sort of IV med every hour (some of ours require morphine q 2 hr, valium q 6 hr, zofran q 8 hr, reglan q 6 hr, ancef q 8 hr, etc.) and then you have your medical patients who are possibly confused, trying to climb out of bed, hitting you and then on my floor, you also have your neuro-onc patients who are on chemo or neutropenic and on double/triple antibiotics, needing blood, etc. And then you could have patients seizing all night and be running up and down the hall every hour responding to the code light. We have many patients who other units would call a "code blue" on that we just treat ourselves so we're pushing ativan, bolusing dilantin and phenobarb and bagging them like it's any other day. Because it is.

Every time I've floated, I've been bored out of my mind and I have floated to both medical and surgical units. I floated just the other day to a medical floor and had a new asthmatic, a 5 year old who had swallowed a quarter and a cystic fibrosis clean out. The most exciting thing I had to do all day was give 2 IV antibiotics. Granted, they gave me a nice assignment because I was floating but when you come from a floor where you frequently have patients with tubes coming out of nearly every orifice in their body, you're not used to the healthy kid admitted for a normal childhood illness.