A day can be so varied depending on the type of unit you are working. You can have laboring patients that can deliver or others that need the OR for a cesarean section. You can be assigned to the OR and do any scheduled cesarean sections or do them all along with other circulating nurses that day. There are happy outcomes and then there will be days that a mom comes in and she has to be told there is no heartbeat and you have to help and support the family when they deliver their baby. There will be days when you barely have time to eat and other times there is not much to do
... and, depending on the size of the hospital in which you work, you could also be a mother-baby nurse, helping new families learn how to care and feed their newborn. You can learn to be a Nursery nurse and be responsible for the stabilization of the newborn after vaginal or cesarean delivery as well.
It depends on your unit’s size and acuity. I’m in a high acuity unit; we have triage (which I don’t work), antepartum (where patients are pregnant and we’re working to keep that way) and labor (where inductions and spontaneous vaginal deliveries happen). Anything can happen on the unit. I might do a repeat c-section in the OR, I might assist with a cerclage placement or removal, I might assist with turning the baby from breech to cephalic, there might be a termination, there might be a fetal demise. While mom gets a nurse, baby also gets a nurse when it arrives, and sometimes I’m baby nurse and I have to coordinate with NICU and Peds. A community hospital is less acuity so less of all that
