What is General Duty Nursing?

[Parrhesia, BSN, RN]

Hello,

I am wondering about the difference between general duty nurse & a med/surg nurse. In what ways are they similar and in what ways are they different?

I know the title implies that you do general nursing, so you do different kinds of things and probably means that you are not specialized, but how is it different from med/surg?

Is being a general duty nurse a strength because you get to do many different kinds of things or is it not as much of a strength because you don't have a particular emphasis?

Thank you in advance for your responses.

[jennylee321]

Haven't heard this term before.

[Rahvin1]

I going to guess that General Duty is the same as a Resource Pool/Float nurse. If that's the case then pretty much you go to whatever unit you are needed on and carry out (usually) the same duties as the normal staff nurses on that unit. A med/surg nurse practices only on a medical and/or surgical unit whereas as "general duty" you might be on a med surg unit doing the same thing as the staff nurses, or you could be on a restorative care unit or an alc unit or wherever depending on your orientation and where you are needed.

I say 'usually' carrying out the same duties as staff nurses on a unit because in my experience resource nurses can often be sent to high acuity areas like ER/ICU/PACU if there is a staff shortage even though they may not have the required skills/courses to fully work on these units. This is especially true in more rural/community hospitals. In this case you pretty much do what you can within your personal scope and help out with the more stable patients.

In terms of strengths there is debate around whether being a resource nurse is a good idea early in your career especially coming out of school. The issue is that staffing managers will often put resource nurses in a staff nurse spot for extended periods if for example someone is off with an injury or on stress leave and they don't think that their absence will long enough to warrant posting an actual temporary job for that spot. If you're a resource nurse new grad and get put into one of those kind of spots for 3-6 months on a med surg unit it's fine, but if it's an alc or primarily rehab unit it could really hurt your skills development and time management coming out of school.

I hope that's an okay answer.

[Parrhesia, BSN, RN]

Hello Rahvin1,

Thank you for the information. Yes, I believe you are correct. I'm applying for a position at a community hospital with only 25 beds in a relatively isolated communtiy. The hospital is run by nurses as the 4 MDs in town would be at the only clinic and would get called by hospital nurses if anything comes up.

I guess I would be encountering all kinds of cases - emergency, natural births, med-surg, mental health, ...etc. It's exciting, but also quite nerve-wrecking that I'll eventually be learning how to do all of this as a new grad. Please let me know if you have any helpful resources that I can prepare for this role.

Thanks!

[Wuzzie]

In the US we call these critical access hospitals. I have a friend who works in one. She is primarily the ED nurse but responds to codes and other emergencies and runs them until the on-call arrives. She is absolutely bad-ass. I'd love to do that if only I was younger.

[Fiona59]

In the US we call these critical access hospitals. I have a friend who works in one. She is primarily the ED nurse but responds to codes and other emergencies and runs them until the on-call arrives. She is absolutely bad-ass. I'd love to do that if only I was younger.

In Canada, we just call this working up North (NWT, Yukon, and the northern areas of most provinces)

[NotReady4PrimeTime, RN]

"General duty nurse" is actually a catch-all term referring to any nurse who is not in education, management or administration. Another way to frame it would be "front-line", "bedside" or "direct care provider".

[Parrhesia, BSN, RN]

@NotReady4PrimeTime

Thank you for your explanation. Makes a lot of sense.