Sir, I would love to invite you to come work on my Labor and Delivery floor and simultaneously work our OB triage, circulate in the OR, and recover your patient in PACU. Also, care for a patient who you cannot see. Some of these patients are on insulin drips, magnesium, severe Pre-Eclampsia, etc. Not to mention active hemorrhages and obstetrical emergencies which are not uncommon. We run our own entire floor. "I just don't think they have it that hard." Yeah, no respect. I came from Med/Surg and L&D is a whole beast that doesn't get the proper recognition.
I am a L&D nurse and used to be med surge nurse.......sometimes certain nursing specialties are misunderstood or undervalued.....when a baby is born, most times the first resuscitation efforts if needed will be from a labor and delivery nurse....OTHER NURSES should support other Nurses-continue to advocate for better staffing, better pay in ALL areas and stop taking about how easy one specialty has it over another when they don't know sh**
Also didn't mention step down or PCU. I think it's the hardest personally. It's like med surg patients that aren't stable and sometimes as critical as an ICU patient. I heard codes from that unit the most. The ICU nurses that float there are constantly complaining how hard it is.
🙋🏻♀️ICU nurse here! Your words are much appreciated; With 11yrs experience I have learned pretty much all specialties come with their own set of difficulties. For me, Neuro ICU has been the most challenging by far. Sending lots of love & light to my fellow nurses!!!! ✌🏻🤍
Baby ICU nurse here(1 year in) and agreed neuro is not my fav because the patients can literally go from 0-100 REAL QUICK! But I push forward and learn! XO
My list would be Med/Surg as #1, Neonatal ICU or really Neonatal in general, ER around #3 due to constant running around, Dialysis, yea patients are evil but really it is easy work, When I worked ICU it was easy work, we kept them sedated only had 1 or 2 patients, did not have to hand out food trays, they don't talk back, truly and easy area to work. Med/Surg i would not go back to that area, your running, you got demanding patients, calling multiple doctors all the time, your dealing with family, you have up to 7 sick demanding patients, they are never assigned in a grouped area so you are spread out. SOOOOOO many are seeking pain and other drugs to stay high, some set timers to call you every time they can get another pain pill so they do not sleep through it, Med/Surg is the absolute worst nursing area to work.
Awesome video. I graduate with my ADN at the end of this semester and I plan to apply to an ICU unit. I worked as a nurse aid in the ICU for almost a year and I agree with you, ICU Nurses are top tier!! 😄
Totally disagree about the OR - it was even a little insulting. I am not sure what hospital you’re at where they seemed relaxed or go home at 2pm. The hours can be good maybe in rural or day surgery centres. Chances are you are just seeing the morning people leave, not the evening or on call. I would work at evening shift 330pm to 1130pm and I’d be on call but on Weds was ‘peds neuro’ and those cases are easily 20-24hrs long. So I’d be there until 7am (when mornings gets there to relieve me). Just to point out, there is no way med-surg is harder than surgery which actually performs the operation. The trio of hardest specialties is absolutely: ER, ICU and OR. Even as an OR nurse, it is relaxing to go float to LTC, even emerg or med-surg. It’s a vacation compared to the OR. The OR functions on a dime. You can’t be 5 min late without a surgeon and anesthesiologist breathing down your neck and if your room runs late, hopefully that wasn’t because of you. I mean, i’ve done stabbings, gun shots, car accidents (multi accident victims on an evening shift), even a ice skate to the jugular. OR is one of the absolute most complicated areas. Take open heart transplants (or any organ transplant) and tell me that med-surg or psych is harder. Pff! Not the same acuity at all. Even in basic endoscopy, as a nurse, if you don’t press the hot snare exactly and hard enough - you can perforate the colon and send them into emergency surgery. It is a different area and ER and ICU are like siblings - whereas, OR is like the equally hard but distant cousin who lives across the country. Lol
People like to harp on OR nurses by saying they are “pigeon holed” into that specialty but the truth is every OR nurse received the same training and have the same skill set as a med surg nurse but not vice versa. Sure you may have not done certain skills in a while but you can’t drop a med surg/ICU nurse in the OR and expect a smooth transition
Yeah!🎉 Acute Dialysis Nurse here--plus we are 24 hours on call-not union and yes I’ve worked 24 hours and no break, we get icu, er, CVU, psych pts etc! I work on 5 machines: CRRT, TPE, Fresenius, Gambro, and Baxter(PD)--we are all over the hospital dragging the machines around. We also have the highest turnover rate. We always call ourselves the ‘bastards of nursing’ cause we work in the hospital but we work for an outside dialysis company that majority are non union. Currently, it’s just me and my fellow nurse for 7 days/24hours. We both are on call every day! I really depend on her and she on me. And...I’ll be going back to travel nursing this summer. Acute Dialysis as travel nurse can make up to 3000 to 5000 +++ a week depending on the state and it’s all the on call crap you get! I was able to pay off my student loan in 6 months working as a travel nurse in acute dialysis! Thanks for the shout out! And Hello to my fellow ‘bastards of nursing’--remember with Acute Dialysis URINE good hands--sorry couldn’t resist.😜
@@DariTrinidad in the clinics NO CALL 🎉 Clinic work is physically hard, at my current travel assignment I do both: chronic and acutes-it can be exhausting cause of the call for acutes! Yeah to the clinics too 🎉
@@DariTrinidad chronic is hard physical work but you don’t take call-I like acutes cause you get to see some pts improve and regain their kidney function and they don’t need dialysis-that’s rewarding, but acutes is long long hours-cause you on call on the day you work and I have literally worked a 24 hour day and no break.
@@travelnurseadventures3225 which would you say is easier ? Im a new grad I’m interviewing for both acute and chronic I want to start off somewhere that won’t be as hectic for learning
I see dialysis nurses sleeping in the chairs while doing dialysis lol... Except in the ICU where they're paranoid about the patient's vitals bouncing around.
Thank you so much for all your knowledge, I watch so many of your videos. I have felt called to nursing for a long time, and I will be making that transition next year. Your videos are helping me prepare and save valuable time upfront! Thank You!!!!!
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Great video. Without a doubt, ICU & CCU nurses are the most difficult nursing there is been there done that. Followed by Trauma Flight nurses. Having said that, ICU & CCU nurses work in a complex and challenging field in the nursing profession, they provide life-saving care to patients that are extremely sick and often fighting for their lives. Nurses in these fields are at the top of their game and take care of patients that require 24/7 nursing care. I will go as far as to say, without ICU nurses, the healthcare system would be unable to accept trauma patients, end of life patients, and others that require highly specialized care. These nurses are specially trained and often cannot be replaced unless an individual has similar training and credentials. Stay Safe & Healthy... Abrazos
I was an LVN on subacute rehab and we had 8:1 with really acute patients. I did everything except start blood and we gave blood a lot, plus dialysis in house, pulse ox monitoring for fresh trachs, managing dysrhythmias, patients with LVADs, central line management, all our own phlebotomy/IV therapy, gosh I could go on. Going into a level 1 ED now as a new grad RN and we are being taught art lines, vents, ICP monitoring. It's wild, I guess bc it's a level 1 but also bc ICU patients are holding much longer due to no beds upstairs.
Thanks for the video! I'm at the end of my first year of the nursing program and graduate with my ADN next May! I've been planning on starting on Med-Surg and working it til I finish my BSN, and then transferring to ICU, and then eventually trying ER when I feel ready for it. 😊
Props to all of those specialties! But you didn't even mention subacute rehabilitation nurses in skilled nursing facilities! Hospitals are sending high acuity patients to skilled nursing facilities; yet nurse/patient ratios at these facilities are set for consideration of the long term care patient. Doctors only do rounds 2xweek, and highly rely on the nurses skills and abilities to notice changes in condition. SAR has basically turned into a medsurg unit with ratios up to 20:1.
Are you kidding me labor and delivery as seven? You think delivering a baby is the hard part of our job? Actually that is only one small portion of our job and it’s funny to me that you think it is the hardest part. Probably one of the reasons our job is the most difficult is that not only are we labor nurses, we are ER nurses, we are OR nurses, scrub nurses, and we are PACU/recovery room nurses, and I would argue that were additionally psych nurses whether we wanna be or not.You should see the amount of education/yearly competencies we have to do as labor and delivery nurses. Not only are we expected to do all that but when any other area is short we have to cover it. We have mad skills as LDR nurses, the fact that you think an OB nurse is the same thing as a LDR nurse means you really have no idea what a LDR nurse is. As a labor nurse we have to manage fetal heart tones and we, not the doctor are the ones who have to call OB team stats and make life and death decisions on a daily basis. Perhaps unless you’ve actually worked some of these jobs it might be best you refrain from your opinions. I would also add that many LDR nurses including myself do not have the luxury of having a doctor onsite. We are placing all of our internal monitors, performing all of our internal exams, etc. We often will not see the MD until things go south or until we’re ready for delivery. Another words, we are the eyes and ears and the doctor. Our doctor may not even be in the hospital. Talk about autonomy!
As an OR nurse I agree i personally think L&D nurses are the most well rounded nurses cause they can do a little bit of everything. If i wasnt such a big tall male nurse i would have done L&D lol. They can recover patients almost like a PACU and ICU nurse, the can circulate and scrub almost like a OR nurse, they can triage almost like a ER nurse, They deal with pysch almost like an pysch nurse they deal with brief but very very important fetal assessments. They are in my opinion the most well rounded nurses it makes sense why before the pandemic they were the highest paid next to us OR nurses.
Right!? ER is afraid to talk to a pregnant patient. Instant send to OB. But we have it easy?! What a dip. When shit hits the fan in LD, it goes horribly wrong. Irritating. Send ER a few crash sections and neonatal rescucitations. The audacity of a nurse to make a vid telling nurses their specialties are easy.
Nursing student here, graduating in 3 months. I think I am going to start at a medsurg floor and do that for 1-2 years to build my skills. I definitely want to specialize in another area of nursing, I just do not know yet!
Up to 7 patients on med surg? 😂 I worked med surg for 8 years and it was a really good night if I only had 7 patients. That one year of psych nursing I did was actually a sweet relief. 🫣😅
