Is Nursing for Me?

Are you thinking about entering the healthcare field? If you are a nurse's aide, a licensed practical nurse, or an allied health technician wishing to broaden your health career, nursing may be for you!

Nursing offers opportunities from bedside practice to the president or top administrator of a healthcare organization. Clinical specialist, nurse practitioner, nurse administrator and nurse educator are just a few examples of the variety of opportunities awaiting you in a nursing career. Nurses are also appointed and elected to influential government positions. If you choose nursing, you will discover a
career filled with personal and professional rewards.

Nursing involves the care of people throughout the continuum of life and provides an essential service to humankind. As career professionals, nurses improve the quality of health care delivery. Nurses work in a variety of practice settings including hospitals, long-term care facilities, community and public health agencies, independent practice, ambulatory care centers, U.S. Public Health Service, military services (Army, Navy and Air Force), Veteran's Administration Medical Centers, and in any setting where people need health care services. Nursing needs capable people from every ethnic and religious background, and nursing positions are available throughout the United States as well as internationally.

As a nurse, you can choose to practice in many geographic locations. You can work in metropolitan areas like New York City or San Francisco, or settings such as a Native American Indian reservation, or with the Frontier Nursing Service in Kentucky. Other possibilities include rural areas such as Maine and Vermont, mining towns in Utah or Colorado, suburban communities in Illinois or New York State, and senior citizen clusters like St. Petersburg or Miami, Florida.

Many nurses begin their careers working in hospitals, which offer opportunities to work in medical/surgical nursing, maternity, and pediatrics as well as in critical care areas. As your career develops, you may choose to practice in one of the many specialized areas of nursing. Specialty nursing acute areas include emergency nursing, operating room nursing, coronary care, and intensive care specialties such as trauma, cardiac surgery, respiratory, pediatrics, and newborn intensive-care. Acute care involves critical thinking, technical skills, and high-level decision-making in life and death situations.

Nurse practitioners and clinical nurse specialists practice in many areas of nursing including: parent-child, pediatric, adult, family, geriatric, and psychiatric-mental health. Nurse practitioners and clinical nurse specialists have earned a masters degree in advanced nursing practice enabling them to practice in expanded roles. These roles include advanced assessment skills and prescriptive privileges.

Nursing school is intellectually challenging. Students need to be in good health and to have a genuine desire to help others regardless of how challenging their illness might be. You must also attend to the emotional needs of patients and families to help them get through their health crisis.

University of Phoenix nursing degree programs are developed for registered nurses who want to ground their professional nursing decisions and actions with appropriate nursing theories, research principles, and practices. Each online degree program has a blend of theory and practice allowing nurses to build their knowledge base and apply what they have learned.

Kaplan University's degree program offers an accredited, online R.N. to B.S.N. degree completion program that centers around health promotion, risk reduction, disease prevention, information and health care technologies, ethics, human diversity, management theory, and health care system and policies.

This online program focuses on developing leaders and educators to fill critical roles in nursing. Based on educational and professional guidelines from the American Association of Colleges of Nursing and the American Nurses Association, this program uses nationally known experts to help you acquire the knowledge to educate nursing students, staff and patients-and prepare for current and future career opportunities. The program is available to RNs with a BSN, ADN, or Diploma.

Did You Know?

Healthcare and Nursing Industry Job Outlook

The Healthcare profession is expected to add 2.8 million new jobs to the U.S. economy by 2010. Consider these other compelling statistics from the Bureau of Labor and Statistics:

• Between 2000 and 2010, 13 percent of all new wage and salary jobs will be in health services.
  
  
• Of the 20 occupations projected to grow fastest from 2000 to 2010, nine are in health services.
  
  
• Average earnings of non-supervisory workers in health services are higher than the average for all private industry.
  
  
• Jobs for personal and home care aides are projected to increase by 67 percent. Positions for medical assistants, physician's assistants, and medical records are expected to jump 60 percent, 57 percent, and 54 percent, respectively.

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