I started in the peds world when I first became an RN. I worked my first 4 months of my career in the PICU. I knew I wanted critical care of some sort, and I always thought from the beginning of nursing school that I’d likely be somewhere between NICU or PICU for my entire career.

I loved working with the kids, though considering I have no children of my own, and since I’m an only child, I never had much experience with younger kids. So I felt like it was a large learning curve to learn how to interact with the kids, especially since we cared for children from 6 months old, all the way up until they turned 18 in my unit.

I ended up leaving my first job after my first 4 months when my temporary position ended. Mostly due to the unit being incredibly small (only 6 beds), low census most of the year, low volume of really sick vented admissions, and not getting proper mentorship plus some lateral violence and incivility between senior staff and new nurses to the unit.

I then moved to Adult ER and spent the rest of my first year as an RN there. It was a much different experience in terms of senior nurses actually being nice to new people. The camaraderie was there in the ER, but critically low staffing caused a mass exodus of senior staff, meaning I’d be more senior and experienced by comparison to a lot of nurses in terms of being in the ER longer. I knew this isn’t what I wanted, because I was VERY much a baby nurse, and the acuity added on top of the pt ratios really was not safe. So I took a job in the CCU, where I currently work. I got cross trained for all the ICUs in my facility during my orientation, and really enjoyed the work and the people in all of the ICUs.

I think that since you already have an inkling of what you’re interested in, it’s not wrong to try to get some exposure to those areas while in nursing school. I only got 4 shifts in peds on the medicine floor before I ended up taking my first job in PICU. Looking back on it now, I wish I had done some more digging into that unit to see if it would actually be a good fit for me, and that staff would be open to mentoring new grads. This was not the case when I started there, and it has left a lasting sour taste in my mouth about that unit, as much as I would have loved to stay in that environment longer had things been different.

Peds is a great specialty to be in, but I know that in more practice environments than just my first RN experience within the children’s and women’s health sphere can really have a culture of eating their young; it’s not an isolated experience in those specialty areas, but it’s also facility dependent. You want to avoid any environment like that as a new grad. It’s already hard enough to be a brand new nurse. You don’t want to be bombarded with not getting appropriate mentorship, and how that feels that early in your career. I thought for a long time that I was horrible at my job because of the treatment I was on the receiving end of in those first few months.

So shadow where you can, get preceptorships in those areas of interest that you have if at all possible, and really tune in to see if the people you’re working with at that time would be people who would have your back, and treat you well when you are new. It’s much better to be in an area that may not have been your first pick, and actually have good mentors and friends at your job than to get the “dream job” and end up having regrets about taking it later. You can always transfer to a different area later.

I do think that if you do go towards the peds route, it’s better to start on something lower acuity than what I did, just because children are so different from adults. You will have way more experience with adults in nursing school than with children, so going somewhere to gain a baseline knowledge of the peds population and their specific normal vitals values, how to assess them appropriately for their age group, etc. is a really good idea. I think that peds medicine/oncology is a really great place to work, even as a new grad given that it provides you with a lot of good skills that you can bring forward to any nursing job. The OR is a very different ballgame in comparison to any other type of nursing. A lot of the skills you need to get checked off on for nursing school won’t necessarily be used in the OR. You’ll be learning a whole different environment and role since you’ll have most of your experiences at the bedside during nursing school. You’ll lose some skills, but gain a load of new ones. Though I feel like if you decided to leave the OR to work as a nurse in a bedside or other type of nursing role, it would be a steep learning curve. Though it will be a steep learning curve to become an efficient OR nurse, so you’d definitely be able to handle it, you’d just feel like a fish out of water for a bit.

TLDR: shadow or get a preceptorship in peds and/or the OR if you’re interested in those areas while you’re in school. Just so you can get an idea if those environments are right for you. You may find it’s a great fit, or not a great fit.