Whats so bad abour Med/surg.

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Specializes in RN.

Since I am new at this, and pre nursing student, it seems that most of the comments made about Med/sug isnt good.....Cans someone tell me why? I'm just curious....I went partially through surg tech school about 8 years ago....I had started my clinical rotation when I had to quit....So I didnt get to see everything....especially from an RN point of view???:confused:

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Specializes in Oncology, Med-Surg, ED.

I love Med-Surg. As a new nurse, I have learned so much there. The drawback in Med-Surg is that your patient to nurse ratio is usually the pits.

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I am in awe of med surg nurses. They really learn how to prioritize and they get very broad knowledge bases because they never know who is going to walk through the door. I feel like a good foundation in med surg is a big key to success.

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Specializes in Hospice, Med/Surg, ICU, ER.

So far, I'm liking M/S just fine.

OK.... it's not what I ultimately want to do in nursing, and the nurse/pt ratio sucks, but I don't have anything major to complain about.

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Specializes in ICU/ER/TRANSPORT.

some of the best nurses i know work med/surge. but i see how the get overwhelmed and pull their hair out everyday. here at my rinkiedink hospital you may come in to work and have 10 bloodsuckin pts. thats the main reason i'm staying off a med/surg floor.

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The only issue I have with med-surg nursing is the horrible ratios you have to deal with in some of the hospitals. I've worked shifts where I had as many as 12 patients, and it was real bad! The result is that you don't have time to practice REAL nursing because you're just running from room to room passing meds---no time to do proper assessments and thorough documentation---which I think is dangerous, both for the nurse and the patient. If you have a decent patient ratio, then med-surg nursing really isn't so bad because you're not dealing with a whole bunch of lines with critical drips or seriously unstable patients with varying arrythmias on the monitor.

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Specializes in ER, telemetry.

Yeah, I agree it's the whole nurse/pt ratio thing that gets me. It's okay if your pts are a little sick, but now a days, pts are sicker and sicker and some of the pts on med surg probably really need to be on tele or a floor that monitors them a little closer (like detoxing pts or GI bleeds).

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Search around a little, go back a page or two, and you'll find a lengthy thread on this exact same subject.

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