When I Graduate: Postpartum Nursing
I’ve been getting questions on the pros and cons of various types of nursing. Which is totally fitting because now that I am in the home stretch (only 10 more months!!), everyone around me is trying to figure out what kind of nurse they want to be after graduation. So, I’m going to start trying to add in different units of nursing and take an unbiased view of the pros and cons. This will be from lecture, observation, clinical experiences, answers from nurses in that unit, and posts on the interwebs.
Feel free to add your own!
Since I just left this floor, I’m gonna start with:
Postpartum Nursing
Pros: Get to see babies, care for mom and dad in a stressful time, lots of patient education for newborn care and postpartum care, monitor for signs of postpartum blues/depression, lots of teaching, patients are healthy (if you don’t like overly sick populations), since it is more education it isn’t as physically taxing as other areas of nursing, slower paced
Cons: Patients are generally healthy (if you want a sicker population), there are not a lot of skills done (such as IVs), most of the job is doing assessments and monitoring for complications followed by sending mom/baby home, not incredibly fast paced.
Please add some more! It’s almost 1am and I can’t think of anything else. My brain is dead.
Love,
Laney
Pros – You become part of mom’s birthing experience. If you are good to her, she will definitely remember what great nurses she had at the hospital. You get to help new parents adjust to their babies. Teaching is very big in PP.
Cons – If you don’t like dealing with checking for lochia, or asking mom if she’s pooped yet… probably not a good area for you.
I don’t know any pros or cons yet, but I hope someone posts some pros and cons of psych nursing! That’s the specialty I am really hoping I will be able to embrace once I get there.
Ooh, those are excellent- thanks!
Hmm, I haven’t been there yet- I don’t think I’ll go until next semester. But one of my teachers is a psych nurse so I’ll ask her some stuff and then post it for you soon!
Of course I would like to see you go into the neurology specialty. Its such an amazingly fascinating field. You get to deal with every part of life in this field. The brain is such an amazing and vast subject, it would be hard for me to think of someone getting bored with it.
I am bored with it… but that is from a patient’s point of view…lol
I agree with your assessment of Postpartum…. but as for Mental Health Nursing… I am bored to tears and find i am asking myself, “how does that make you feel?”