5 reasons to go into medical/surgical nursing your first year out of nursing school

Being a nursing instructor, I hear a lot about the specialties that my students want to go into right out of school. I happened to be one of them when I was a student. I wanted to go into Labor and delivery right out of school. It was what I did my senior practicum in and it was what I thought I wanted to do. However, I was told over and over again “You should really spend your first year in med/surg”. No one ever gave me a reason why and I was starting to believe they were paid to say it. I did spend my first year on a med/surg floor and I have never regretted it and I am here now to tell you why I think it was a good idea.

• A med/surg floor can offer up the most opportunities for the general nursing skills. All those skills you learned in nursing school that you never got to practice in clinicals? The med/surg floor is the only place that will give you the opportunity to practice them all. Some specialties might have some skills, but overall, the med/surg floor will have almost all of them. So you can practice and get good at those skills.
• In addition to practicing your skills, you will also just be able to increase your general nursing knowledge on med/surg floors. We all graduate from nursing school feeling like we know nothing. Nothing about skills, nothing about diseases, nothing about meds, etc. These floors have basic and complicated diseases, disorders and procedures. You will gain a general knowledge of most diseases on this floor other than the same disease I deal with everyday in my current job, cancer. It will make you a more rounded out nurse, and possibly open your eyes to a new specialty you can pursue later on in your career.
• It is a great place for time management. In nursing school they taught you about time management and then gave you a maximum of  3 patients. And even then, you weren’t solely responsible for those patients. If something happened, there was always someone to back you up. You weren’t admitting and discharging and taking orders off the charts. In school, it was different. In the real nursing world, time management is very different. You are juggling 5 patients with different tests and appointments and medications and schedules. Then you have an admit and a discharge and you transfer someone all while one of your other patients is going down the tubes. This is when prioritization and time management become key. You will not get the best experience in any other specialty as in med/surg nursing.
• Going along with time management comes organization. You have to organize your patient information and keep 4-5 different sets of  medications, report info, appointments separate and not mix them up. It is really easy to mix up patient information and give incorrect medication, chart on the wrong patient, etc. Organizing your priorities and the cares for your day. Lumping activities together so as to not go into the room 10 times when you go in once. That is a big lesson your first year out of school.
• Medical/surgical floors are where the true shortage in nursing is. Everyone in school now wants to specialize. So then everyone is fighting for specialty opportunities and everyone on the med/surg floor is making double time and more per hour to fill the extra need for nurses. I was called almost every day off I had while working on the med/surg floor to see if I wanted to come in for extra pay because they were short staffed. If you want job security in nursing, you will find it on the med/surg floor.

Even though I spent my first year on a med/surg floor, I wish I had known why I was being told to go. It would have made me more excited to know what valuable information I would be gaining from it, and it probably would have made me pay a little more attention. I hope this info helps a little bit that when one of your instructors tells you it is a good idea to spend at least your first year in med/surg nursing, you will know why and not think they are getting compensated for saying it. And no, I am not being paid to say it either.