Someone recently asked me why I chose to specialize in critical care. I gave him my stock answer which is this:
As a student, I got the impression that if you can be successful in critical care, then you can pretty much be successful at any kind of nursing.
Later on I was pondering this and realized that my stock answer is not entirely honest. Here’s what really happened…
As a student, each time I started a new clinical rotation, I was filled with enthusiasm. “This is for me!” I thought, when I did my psychiatric nursing rotation. I love working with the mentally ill! Maybe I’ll eventually become an art therapist! Then, onto maternity care nursing… “I would love working in Labor and Delivery! How exciting, to be able to participate in the mircle of birth every single day you are at work!” My fellow students were becoming exasperated with me: “She’s changing her mind again?”
It was down to the last few days… I had to choose a specialty for my senior semester. Someone mentioned to me that Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists (CRNAs) start out with six figure salaries, and in order to get into CRNA school, you must do two years of critical care.
Six figures? I was intrigued. I didn’t even think about what a nurse anesthetist actually did – I just thought, “Sign me up!”
So I did a little research and looked for nurse anesthetist jobs on monster.com. Sure enough, there were many postings for CRNAs and they all started out at six figures. So I made up my mind – critical care. I’d like to point out that while I certainly didn’t know for certain that I wanted to become a nurse anesthetist; I just knew that I didn’t want to rule it out.
A month later I found myself in the MICU, entering my final student rotation.
As it turns out, many of my colleagues in the MICU chose critical care for the same reason, and quite a few have put in their two years and are now in CRNA school. As for myself? I have decided that I decided that I have absolutely no interest in becoming a nurse anesthetist. It’s just not how I want to spent my days. I’m more interested in some of the psychosocial aspects of nursing…the family dynamics, palliative care, the team approach. Besides, my personality and style of working is much better suited to medicine than to surgery, and as a CRNA I would find myself working side by side with surgeons.
It’s true that critical care nursing is challenging and will prepare you for a variety of situations, but I am no longer am of the opinion that if you can hack critical care, you can pretty much hack any kind of nursing. For example, as interesting as I might find psychiatric nursing, I don’t think I have that special kind of patience that it requires. Same goes for labor and delivery. As I was going through my own labor, the nurse who took care of me was outstanding – calm, patient, and managing to do her job despite my screaming and howling.
So I guess my point is this: If you are a nursing student and are wondering what to specialize in, don’t sweat it too much. Sometimes it’s not important how you arrive somewhere, it’s just important that you actually get there.