What is the freaking deal with OB?

dcwang · May 6, 2015

I'm going to start nursing school this summer and from what I've heard I would never wanna work in OB, L&D, women's health, or as nurse midwife. Some girls like the giving birth proceed. In fact I dread OB rotation. I find myself as one of the fewer interested in OR, Pacu, pre-op.

NICUmiiki, DNP, NP · May 6, 2015

I think a lot of people have warm fuzzy memories of L&D units from their experiences as visitors/patients. Babies and happiness and glitter and such..

All I can think of is sticking my hand in gooy lady partss all day.

AspiringNurseMW · May 6, 2015

Maybe because they think of the "magic" around birth. I see alot of women who had a good experience or even a bad one where the nurse made a difference be inspired to do the same.

I am along those lines, my prenatal care and delivery with my oldest was lacking to say the least (although my L&D nurse was wonderful and supportive). My 2nd however I had amazing care and homebirth under two nurse midwives. I had no idea it could be like that, most women don't. Her birth was basically the deciding factor to enter nursing school.

HOWEVER, I did also work at a birth center for a year and have doula training and attended a number of births as such, and one of my good friends is an L&D nurse, so I do also have a realistic view of L&D /midwifery and don't think it's rainbows and butterflies and am not in it for the cute babies.....

Just my 2Â¢

iPink, BSN, RN · May 6, 2015

Curious myself. But when I was in nursing school, we realized during OB rotation the turn over rate and stress level was very low. Although L&D can be stressful at times. We saw nurses who had been employed there since forever and we quickly found out those units were one of the toughest to get into. The appeal was great from that point. At least it was for me.

When I was a new nurse, I started in critical care to gain experience then I transferred to a busy Postpartum unit and don't plan on going anywhere else.

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guest769224 · May 6, 2015

I want to be a labor and delivery nurse, due to the exposure I've had in clinicals. It fascinates me.

I want to work in the specialty due to low turnover rates, increase my knowledge of the birth process, and work in intense situations.

It's a hot specialty for travel nursing as well, which I plan on doing. Many RN's I've spoken to in L&D units express great satisfaction in their chosen field.

I feel like it is somewhat a protected specialty against what many other specialties are experiencing trouble in: inadequate staffing, unconcerned management, high turnover. Those don't seem to afflict L&D in the same way. It's one of those specialties many nurses find enough happiness in to stay for their entire career. Thats a draw for me.

Mavrick, BSN, RN · May 6, 2015

I feel like it is somewhat a protected specialty against what many other specialties are experiencing trouble in: inadequate staffing, unconcerned management, high turnover. Those don't seem to afflict L&D in the same way. It's one of those specialties many nurses find enough happiness in to stay for their entire career. Thats a draw for me.

Ah Ha, Now we're getting somewhere.They THINK it will be an easy job and they will be pampered like the birth mothers. I'm not so sure about the attraction for a unit that is tough to get into.

I was thinking they want to be around cute little babies all day on a floor that has music piped in, carpet on the floor, big ol' fishtank in the lobby and its own special kitchen and chef.

A hospital I worked in had all that and you could see the difference when the elevator doors opened. On the regular nursing floor they had specked beige tile, institutional beige walls and various pieces of equipment cluttering the halls.

nurseprnRN, BSN, RN · May 6, 2015

When I worked in undergraduate teaching, probably 90% of new students stated they wanted to work in OB/mother-baby/peds when they entered. I always thought it was because they were familiar with babies from siblings and babysitting, and thought it would be a happy, easy job. They were generally shocked to learn that they would have student rotations in all areas, mostly in med/surg with old people, but most found out that there were many good places to work in nursing, and the balance of nature was restored. :)

More recently, like over the last decade or so, there's been a huge attraction towards CRNA school and NP school. All the new students think they'll graduate, work a year in ICU or ER and then do one of those. I attribute this in part to George Clooney and Hugh Laurie (she says only half-kidding). However, reality has set in over the last few years as they have discovered that 1) it's vanishingly rare for any new grad to go into ICU or ER, and 2) CRNA programs are chockablock full of people with many years of ICU experience, not new grads with only one, and 3) NP programs prefer nurses with some actual experience, not one year somewhere. Yes, of course there are direct-entry NP programs, but sure as heck not CRNA ones.

I think things are swinging back to OB after a few years of this. The students will have the same let-downs to deal with (and I'm not talking breast milk here), something else will come along to be the fad du jour, and lather-rinse-repeat.

sjalv · May 6, 2015

I feel like many new nursing students or nursing students to be don't realize the severity of the bad days one will have in OB. They think about how exciting it'll be to teach a new parent about their first baby, but they don't think about what it'll be like being at the bedside with a mother who has failed fertility treatments time and time again only to get a sliver of hope that she'll finally be a mother when she's told she's pregnant, just to find that the fetus is not viable at 20 weeks. They don't think about what it'll be like when a baby's positioning can lead to a situation where it has to be literally cut out of the mother in order for her to live. They don't think about how depressing it is to see a baby born to a heroin-addicted mother and having to refrain from interacting or holding it as much as possible because it is already overstimulated.

Basically, many of them don't consider the downsides of working in OB.

llg, PhD, RN · May 6, 2015

] I think things are swinging back to OB after a few years of this. The students will have the same let-downs to deal with (and I'm not talking breast milk here) something else will come along to be the fad du jour, and lather-rinse-repeat. [/size']

When I was in school many years ago, the fad was CCU. There had been a lot of development in cardiac care back and the CCU's were the "hot new thing" out there. Also, CCU nurses learned how to interpret monitor strips -- a task that was considered "advanced and therefore glamorous way back then." Those of us who were interested in maternal-child were looked down upon as not being on the cutting edge of health care.

**NICU Guy, BSN, RN** · May 6, 2015

Some of it has to do with the type of patients that they believe L&D deals with. The healthy women coming to deliver a baby. It is one of the few units that the patients are happy (after the birth), friends and family come visit to congratulate them. It is a specialty of nursing that avoids the typical chronic Med/Surg type of patient.

Until they actually have their OB clinical rotation, they don't see the downside of OB, the stillbirths, the 22 weekers that are clinging to life, NAS babies that are inconsolable.

RNsRWe, ASN, RN · May 6, 2015

Most common answers to your questions seem to be "oh, I just love babies. LOTS of babies. Can't wait to hold them and bathe them and spend LOTS of time with new mothers....being around all the babies". And so on.

Most of the time, if it's a mother I'm hearing "I want to work in L&D/OB" from, they either had a horrible experience (and want to make a magical one for every patient they have the privilege of attending) or they had a wonderful experience (and want to make a magical....fill in the blank).

While there is definitely truth to the general population being healthy young women, I have to give a shout-out to the nurses at a hospital I used to be in, where the "healthy" women were obese and malnourished and doing heaven-knows-what prior to and during their pregnancies, resulting in less than ideal births and postpartum Problem Children. Babies born with all kinds of issues, and mothers who had all kinds of issues (and let's not leave out the Baby Daddies....with all kinds of issues) :unsure: