Student Looking for Information on Ortho/Sports Med. Nursing

[VAorthoRN, ASN, BSN]

Hello! I am starting Nursing school in August and have been thinking about different specialties to narrow in on. I worked in a physical therapy clinic for a couple years (as an aide and in the front office) and have always thought going into sports medicine or orthopedics would be interesting. Is there anyone out there that can give me a little more background and/or tell me about their experience in this field? Possibly in an outpatient sports medicine surgery center?

Also, I know I don't need to know what I will specialize in right now. I am excited that school will introduce me to areas I don't know anything about yet. Just trying to get an idea...thanks!

I already posted this in the student section but didn't get any responses so I thought I would try here, also. Thank you!

[rnsheri]

Welcome to the frantic, funny, fantastic world of a soon-to-be-a-nurse! I specialized in ortho for several years. But be careful committing to a specialty until you have some clinical experience. I only say that because I loved ortho, but it wasn't my first choice. I thought I wanted to do ED, CVICU, MICU--the last thing I thought I would like is ortho. At my previous place of employment ortho was for scheduled patients (generally hips, knees, shoulders) and unscheduled patients (broke a hip, tibia/fibula, shoulder, wrist, etc.) So of course you'll want to be familiar with pre-op and post-op care in general. I worked in a relatively small facility, and about half of our patients were ortho/urology and half were non-infectious Med/Surg. And during school, pay special attention to how you need to transition and patient from the bed to standing in the case of shoulders, legs, hip, back, foot, wrist, etc. See, I didn't pay close attention because I was sure I'd be in critical care and sure we'd always have a CNA specializing in ortho. Well, in the beginning, I'd get a load of training from our CNA. She'd been there over 15 years and man, she knew her stuff. But the hospital ran into "funding issues" which meant that, on night shift, we often worked without a CNA and even if we had one, ortho's require a lot of assistance going to the bathroom, walking, transitioning from bed to sitting to standing. Good body mechanics are a must. And all the Med/Surg stuff... yep, you'll need to learn all that too. 95% of what I did daily, I learned after I was hired. Before that I waited tables. If you'd like to know more, I'd be glad to talk with you via private message.

[mmc51264, BSN, MSN, RN]

With the aging of the population, ortho is changing to include a lot of off service medicine pts as well. Many of our geriatric pts that fall and have hip fx, are managed by medicine and followed by ortho. We get lots of different kinds of pts. No stepdown on our floor. I think ortho is great. I started in LTC rehab and loved it too (I ended up with my dream job).