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?
Showing posts with label peds. Show all posts
Showing posts with label peds. Show all posts
Thursday, November 21, 2013
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.
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.
Friday, July 26, 2013
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)