Undergrad on a medical unit or a surgical unit?

[AB-MedRN]

Hi,

I'm a 4th year nursing student in southern Alberta and I'm new to the forums. I was wondering where it is more beneficial to work as an undergrad nurse during my last year. I have a choice between a medical unit (specialty is pulmonary, but they get some diabetic and internal stuff) or a surgical unit (colorectal with some other internal and they also get patients recovering from mastectomys etc-I did one of my 3rd year rotations on this unit).

I'd like to work somewhere that gives me as much experience with as many different things as possible.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks:bow:

[NotReady4PrimeTime, RN]

Welcome to allnurses.com and the Canadian Nurses forum.

The best thing you'll get from working as a UNE is the chance to develop your time management and organizational skills. Either of the areas you mentioned will present you with challenges to conquer. Medical patients tend to have longer stays, a lot more routine medications, multiple comorbidities and will present you with opportunities to practice many skills. Surgery has a more rapid turnover, as a rule, so you'd have lots of practice with admissions and discharges, wound and drain care, fluid management, patient teaching and so on. You'd learn a lot on either unit. You'll need to base your choice on whether you want to see the same patients all the time or if you'd like variety.