Mary’s Pad

Yesterday I talked about having to choose where to do my senior elective. This is a small piece of a bigger dilemma for me. There are a lot of my classmates who walked into Nursing 1 knowing exactly where they wanted to work. I was one of those who walked in having a good idea of where I did NOT want to work. I kept an open mind, but I knew almost definitely that I didn’t want to work in OB, pediatrics, geriatrics, or mental health. Besides that I was pretty open. I have been through all those rotations, and even though I learned a lot, and did well for the most part on those floors, it’s just not what I want to do. I knew, remotely, that I would want to do something that was challenging, because I need the stimulation, the mental exercise of working in situations that need me to have my thinking cap on ALL the time. Don’t get me wrong, none of these floors are easy to work on, and you do need to be a critical thinker, but it’s just not my cup of tea.

After spending some weeks in the ER in the Summer of ‘06, I fell in love with ER nursing. I love the pace, the unpredictability, the “think fast on your feet” challenge, and the teamwork when that stretcher rolls in. I have my official ER rotation in the last five weeks of this semester, and I can’t wait! In the fall of ‘06 I did my Med-Surg rotation. I spent seven weeks of that semester on the Renal floor, where we had patients with renal and liver issues, and others such as pancreatic, gall bladder, and other complex organ problems. It was definitely the most intense seven weeks of my entire program so far, and I loved it. I learned so much in those seven weeks about the human body and all the ways in which it can fail, and about being a nurse, and what that means. I had an awesome instructor who taught me not just the techniques and skills, but about being a nurse, the principles, the ethics, and advocacy, the diligence… all those things that can only be modeled. I loved that floor, and promised myself that if I ever chose to work Med-Surg, that’s the floor I would work on. On thursday of last week I completed my first rotation of this semester, the Management rotation, and it was on this same renal floor, and I enjoyed it as much as I did the first time around.

So that brought the number of floors I would definitely love to work on to two - the ER and the Renal floor.

Then we started learning about Critical Care, and I have started to fall in love with that too. As I mentioned before, I haven’t been on the Critical Care floor yet so I am reserving judgment until I have been on the Unit for a while. I will be there for four weeks starting this coming Tuesday. There are several things that are making me lean towards the ICU: I eventually want to work in Trauma, and Critical Care is the foundation for Trauma. I also would like, if I can bring myself to go back to school, to eventually become a Nurse Practitioner, and I think that experience in Critical Care won’t hurt. But I don’t know, I need to wait and see for this one, and talk to a few more people. But I need to start making appointments for interviews soon, so I can’t sit on the fence much longer with this.

I need wisdom!