Surgical nursing, the same as med surg nursing

keira30 · Mar 14, 2009

Hi, I just saw your post. I graduated in December and have been working on a surgical floor since January. I can tell you, it is very, very similar to med-surg. In fact, when I tell people where I work, I often just say "med-surg" because it's basically the same thing. On my floor, we have 6-7 patients and they keep the nurses running crazy all day. Not only are the recovering from some sort of surgery (from ortho to gyno), they usually have comorbidities to deal with. Last week, I had a patient with an NG tube, PICC line, ascites, a dehiscence, Foley, COPD, pos Hep C, and pos PPD, plus TPN and a PCA pump. It was a mess. We also have lots of patients with port-a-caths, CHF, cancer, etc. ... and almost all of 'em have DM, it seems! We give insulin and metformin like it's going out of style! The only difference, in my opinion, between surg and med is that, with surg, you are focusing a lot on post-surg bleeding (so constant vitals and monitoring) and tons of pain meds (lots of complaining patients and call bells!). You get very familiar with Dilaudid, Percocet, Lortab, Ultram, Reglan, Zofran and morphine. Oh, and you have lots of vomiting on the surge floor.

It's a wild ride on a surgery floor. I've only been there about 2 months, and I've learned way more that I learned in nursing clinicals as a whole! And I've also lost 5 pounds from the running around and no time to eat!

Keira

onfire4gzuz · Mar 15, 2009

Thank you soo much! This helps, I think this is something I would definitely be interested in going into. Med Surg was my number one, but it seems like you learn just as much in surgical nursing. Thanks so much for replying! appreciate it.