Where do you wanna work?

RN on the neuro unit towards the end of our clincials: So, do you know where you wanna work?
Me (in my head): NOT HERE!
Me (out loud): Well I know where I don't want to work. Ortho was definitely not my favorite. I'm not really sure.

I could see how med surg would give you tons of clinical and time management skills. There's also a huge variety so you probably wouldn't get bored. Of course that also means you have know a lot about a bunch of different disease processes.

Ortho was just incredibly boring for me and I am definitely not an ortho nurse!

Neuro was actually more interesting as I look back. I enjoy the knowledge behind neuro and brain/cognitive stuff is more interesting to me than a lot of other things. Neuro exams are kind of interesting, but I'm not sure I would do neuro long term because sometimes the patient's are just screwing with you... and that's annoying.

Labor and delivery was obviously my true love, which I hoped it would be. It has just enough excitement and down time (usually) that I don't think I would be bored or exhausted constantly. There's all sorts of new skills to learn with reading fetal monitoring strips and participating in c-sections all that jazz.

Mental health is hard for me. I really liked some of it and I reaaallly didn't like other parts. I liked being on the youth unit and sitting in on outpatient adolescent groups, so I could see myself working with adolescents, especially teen girls. But I think that if I were going to do mental health I'd really rather be a NP that does counseling or therapy. But I'm not going to go to school for that... so that's kind of a moot point. Regardless, there are people with mental illness everywhere so mental health will be useful in any nursing.

I'm excited to do an ER observation this fall because I'm also super interested in working in the ER.

Peds is pretty interesting and I think it would be good from the aspect that I like kids, but unfortunately kids come with their own parents and sometimes they're hard to deal with. Also, IV starts on kids freak me out.

So the current answer... I STILL HAVE NO FREAKING CLUE.
I'll let you know.

Med surg 1 - Ortho

Well my clincials for Med surg 1 are over! We were on the ortho unit at the hospital for four weeks and my general feeling about ortho is that it's not for me.

I guess if you really like learning about ortho procedures and assisting patients with PT it might be fun. Just not my favorite. Most of the patients are simply post-op and therefore not especially "sick", so there's not a whole lot of things to do.

Procedures accomplished:

- Med adminstration
- Charting
- Head to Toe assessments
- Pain assessments
- Safety checks
- Bed baths
- Linen changes
- Physical therapy assistance

Procedures witnessed:
- Fellow student put in a foley catheter
- Assessment on a patient that appeared to have possibly had a stroke.

Care Plans:

They're still annoying but they seemed easier this time. I knew what was expected of me and it seemed easier to express my thoughts. It also helped that my instructor didn't want pages and pages of care plans. Short and sweet is much easier.

OR observation:

I got to do a day of OR observation this 8 weeks which was fun. I've observed in an OR before but I got to see a craniotomy this time which was really neat. I like being in the OR but I don't think that I'd want to be a nurse in the OR, honestly they don't get to do very much. Being a scrub nurse might be fun, but both times I've observed in the OR there have been surgical techs instead of scrub nurses. Being a circulating nurse is just kinda boring to me. I was amazed at how fast the nurse put the patient's foley in. It was amazing!