Showing posts with label pediatrics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pediatrics. Show all posts

Thursday, November 21, 2013

What jobs am I going to apply for??

Here with less than a month left of nursing school and I'm still not decided on where I want to work. People keep asking... and I still have NO IDEA.

This is not great..

Places I know I do not want to work:
- Geriatrics, nursing homes, rehab hospitals
- Ortho
- NICU
- Anything cardiac
- Really any floor nursing

Places I might like to work:
- Trauma/Neuro ICU
- ER/ED
- Labor and Delivery (in the right hospital)
- PICU (Mybe?? I never got to observe here and now I'm wishing I had)
- High risk OB
- Medical ICU (or other. NOT Cardiac)
- Progressive care unit
- PACU (not likely to happen due to no ICU experience)
- Peds?? (I thought I was over peds.. but then I was thinking about infant/toddler the other day...)

So what jobs am I going to apply for? People keep telling me, apply for everything. Get your experience and then go wherever you want. The problem is I don't know if I can stick it out for 1-2 years in a job I hate! So... I don't know. Maybe we'll see how desperate I get.

I'm actually still really leaning towards ER. I'll get lots of skills practice. Lots of assessment. See lots of different stuff. Less wiping butts/bed baths. People are only there for a couple of hours. It's fast paced, etc. I would love to do ICU but I'm still super scared of how much I have to learn to do it. Plus it may be super hard to find a new grad ICU job.

What jobs did you apply for straight out of nursing school? Where did you end up?

Tuesday, September 3, 2013

Summer Part 2: Pediatrics!

Pediatrics was my only clinical of the last 7 weeks of summer!

Well Peds has been over for a couple of weeks but I only had 4 days off in between my summer and fall semesters so I feel like I'm still playing catch up.

We did our clinicals on a general pediatric floor with kids of all ages and diagnoses. I worked with a 2 week old, 1 year old, 10 year old and 11 month old on my weeks there. They were all in for various diagnoses like fever, seizures, short gut, etc.

Procedures accomplished:
- Vitals
- Med administration
- Swab/culture on newborn

Care plans:
Still required. These ones were better than others. They required less info overall, although more about cognitive and developmental stages obviously. I did my three early on so I was done with them.

Observations:
Pediatric Clinic
I observed in the peds clinic run by the hospital where they see all the kids that don't have insurance or are on the state insurance. It was a pretty routine doctor's office routine. Bring kids back, get vitals, height, weight and then get them in a room. I did watch them do a couple lead tests, other blood tests and vaccinations. Super cute kids, but I think I would be bored working there.

Pediatric ER
I really enjoyed my pediatric ER observation. They weren't super busy while I was there but I got to observe them triage, assess, treat, etc. They attempted to put an IV in a 6 month old who was actually diagnoses with an intussusception (which I had just learned about so that was cool). It was interesting to see how the child life specialist helps the nurses by trying to distract/entertain the child.

Overall Peds was fine... although nothing spectacular. When I was younger I always though I wanted to be a pediatric nurse but I don't really think I do. I could possibly do Peds ER, but not floor work probably. It's just like doing procedures on adults, but they're smaller and they scream more. Also most children come with parents.