What Nursing Job is for Me?

[trulynurseatheart]

I am a staff nurse for almost 3 years now on a busy tele/ortho/medsurg floor. 5:1 ratio. Paper charting, smaller hospital, in metropolitan Chicago, serving mostly medicaid medicare patients. (Like everyother hospital, theyre making changes that are short staffing us, angering us, and treating us as labor.)

Mostly, I do not feel the environment is best suited for my personality. Honestly, I realized that in my few months off of orientation.

I do not have great time management, consistently late finishing charting. I get easily stressed out, but learn to deal with it, and for the most part, my coworkers tease me about it, but tolerate it. I think it is too much for me to keep track of all at once. I am sorta scattered brain, and not a very organized person, at work or in my home life. Though, I do have my method. I like to take my time and think about problems, and not always fast to act on the spot, though doing better with experience.

Co workers complement me on my passion for patient education, & my bedside manner and compassion. My favorite part about the job, like most nurses, is being able to spend time with my patients.

I know the job market is slooww right now, and Im glad I have a job, and am holding onto it for now.

I just wonder where should my next move be? I always wanted to do ICU, but wanted to start out on a regular floor (SOO GLAD I DID, personally).

Also, community health and home health, and preventative health care sound more up my alley. I am working on my BSN right now.

Any suggestions? Do I sound like a candidate for ICU? I have floated there. Our ICU is small, and I do okay there, but dont really have the full experience yet.

I was thinking ICU for a few years, then go into home health and community health so I can also work PRN in hospitals, if needed for extra money, when I have kids, etc.

I just want a job that I feel like I am working at my best potential, and it is not on a medsurg floor.

Advice, comments appreciated, thanks!

[PostOpPrincess, BSN, RN]

ICU can be a tremendously stressful environment that requires very quick, flexible, and out of the box thinking. It can be very, very, very stressful.

How comfortable are you with chaotic environments that require YOU to adjust to it and not the other way around?

How comfortable are you with giving blood FAST, giving fluids fast, dealing with someone who is potentially coding or on the way there in front of you?

How do you feel about very sick people that you cannot do much teaching to?

How do you feel about titrating multiple drips: betablockers, inotropes, alpha-adrenergics, etc., all at once?

How do you feel about coding someone for hours?

How do you deal with death?

How do you deal with someone who can NEVER be stable or can become unstable in one flash of a second?

Good luck.

[mh356, BSN, RN, EMT-B]

You sound just like me! I did 2 years of med/surg/telemetry nursing to get the basics of nursing down. I like to take my time and make sure I learn things the right way. Now I'm in a Neuro IMC that is known for being very gentle with new people and they have given me a great orientation. Its still kinda crazy, but I think thats more neuro (patients trying to climb OOB, etc..)

Maybe a step down or IMC floor to just learn a few new skills at a time (we don't do any crazy invasive monitoring). For this time in my life, the IMC and neuro works for me. But when I get older and when I have kids I know I will need something different, by that time I'll be ready for a change from neuro. :wink2:

[HappyBunnyNurse]

If your favorite things are pt interaction and pt education then you probably wouldn't enjoy ICU. I always thought I would like ICU but when I did my clinicals, I disliked the lack of interaction. (I have found a good balance with NICU; ICU enviroment but opportunity for teaching and interaction with parents.)

[trulynurseatheart]

I really wish I had more time with each patient I have. With 5 patients, there is usually that 1 or 2 patients you dont pay due time to...

We had a rapid response today, it was intense, but I was on top of it. Its not the same as an ICU unstable coding patient, but I learn through experiences.

JOpacu, I think I could handle that, as it comes with experience. Its a matter of if I would like it. Death is never easy, and each subsequent death of a patient is not as painful as the first. Heck, Im doing things as a nurse now that I never thought I could/would do 8 years ago!

I am ready to move on in my nursing career, Im just not sure where to go.

Thanks for you advice.

[diane227, LPN, RN]

You might do very well in a few areas: Psychiatric nursing. If you enjoy talking to people and thinking about problems and ways to solve them, then psychiatry might be a great job for you. You seem to have a personality that would fit that profession well. You might try becoming an instructor, teaching other nurses in a hospital setting or at the college level. You might do well becoming a patient advocate or a SANE (sexual assault nurse examiner), or a case manager. You might also enjoy working somewhere like an urgent care clinic or, infection control or employee health. Occupational health nursing is a speciality all it's own and you should get certified in that field if that is what you want to do. It pays rather well also.