How do you feel about those in “soft” nursing?

I currently work peri operative nursing. I work in an inpatient facility so I have the benefit of making inpatient wages which is much higher than outpatient earnings. The job is fairly simple. A lot of the patients are same day elective procedures but I still need to maintain my nursing skills because I need to monitor lab values and read rhythm strips. We hold for inpatients as well so need to manage chest tubes, traction and other monitored interventions. While we don’t fully recover patients we deal with patients that the recovery unit passes off and often have to finish recovery so we still need to keep up with advanced certifications. It’s 4 ten hour shifts. No weekends, no nights and no holidays. So, I recently heard some RN educators basically stated that the peri-op nurses are barely nurses since we just “babysit” patients for an hour or so before procedure then discharge them after recovery. For some reason this has really gotten to me. So much so that I am considering transferring to the PACU ( I have several years ICU experience so am able to just transfer) If I did that though then I’d be back to half nights, holidays, weekends and even call. Plus all the drama you have to deal with on the inpatient side since our PACU is always boarding. I know this a little all over the place but I’m just kind of looking for a discussion about how other nurses feel about “soft” nursing.