Nursing is very respectable profession. Huge numbers of job opportunities with excellent benefit packages are available for nurses. Besides these advantages people who join nursing as a profession also find personal satisfaction because it is really a great feeling to help miserable patients. Nurses help patients in many different ways. Nurses take care of pregnant women and newborns and also help injured and sick people. They facilitate patients and families to decide best combination of health and social services such as hospitals, home care, rehabilitation, physical therapy and others. Nurses are able to design effective plan that ensures suitable nursing care.

What is Nursing?

Nursing is the combination of science and technology with caring skills. Nurses apply all the science and technology they learned during their studies. With recent advancements in technology and medical sciences nursing has become very rewarding career. Nursing education enables you to learn many skills such as diagnosis of disease, assessment of patient physical condition, emotional state, lifestyle, hopes and fear. You will also able to plan the specific goals for patient's improvement. You will learn about how to execute treatments and prescribed drugs for the betterment of patients. You will also able to decide changes in treatment plan on the basis of regular evaluation of results of previous plan.

Working Options at Hospitals

In hospitals nurses work every where. In fact they work in all departments of hospitals. Nurses are considered as the major single component of any hospital staff. Nurses are crucial contributor of hospital patient care as well as home patient care. Following is the list of areas of hospital where nurses are actively working and providing their services.

• Bed side patient care units
• Operation theaters, trauma centers and emergency rooms
• Medical record room and other medical offices
• Intensive care units ICU
• Surgical and recovery units
• X-rays and other diagnostic units
• Pediatrics
• Newborn nurseries and neonatal intensive care unit
• Psychiatric and drug treatment centers
• Patient care in ambulances and helicopters
• Laboratories
• Obstetrics department and many more

Working Options for Nurses

Nurses have lot of options regarding choice of work they want to do, where they want to do and when they want to do. Following is the list of such option.

• Long term care centre includes rehabilitation, nursing homes and hospitals.
• Medical Offices such as eye doctors, dentists, obstetricians, surgeons, and others
• Community Health Clinics
• Home care visiting nurses, private duty nurses
• Self Supporting Outpatient and surgery Centers
• Nursing schools as professors
• Corporate health centers occupational safety, consultants and educators
• Other companies such as pharmaceutical, medical technology, biotech and others
• Insurance and managed care companies
• Research centers for example research nursing
• Schools including K-12, university clinics
• Military
• Peace Corps and international service organizations
• Hospital regulators nurses conduct surveys and inspections

Job Hours

Nurses are allowed to work any time during the whole day with restriction of specific time frame. Nurses can work in days, evenings and nights. Nursing shift can be as short as 8 hours and also continue till 12 hours. Nurses can also work for long duration that is 36 hours in 3 days and 40 hours in 4 days. Such nurses get 3 to 4 days off. Some nurses only work on weekends on part time basis. This shows that profession of nursing offers extremely flexible working hours.

Economic growth in industry/Salary Information

Statistical data shows that there is a shortage of well trained and educated nurses. This shortage is due to the fact that current nursing workforce is expected to retire over the next 10-15 years and more trained nurses are required to replace them by year 2020. Licensed Practical Nurse can earn $35,000 to $40,000 per year. Registered Practical Nurse can earn $40,000 and $60,000 per year.

How to Become a Nurse?

High school diploma holders are eligible to join nursing school. If you want to become nurse you can join any nursing school and earn required degree in nursing. Different degrees are available from entry level to advance level. Different certification and licensure exams are also available. Different top accredited universities and colleges offer all these degrees. Now a day's different top accredited online universities and online colleges offer different nursing degrees online. These degrees include Associate Degree in Nursing Online, Bachelor Degree in Nursing Online and Master Degree in Nursing Online. Online universities offer Nursing Degrees Online with flexibility to learn. You can attend your class any time from any where whenever is convenient for you. These top accredited online universities also provide financial assistance in the form of scholarships, grants and student loans. Nursing degrees online are also value able if you obtain them from top accredited online universities.

Licensure

After completion of your degree whether you have earned it from traditional university or from any top accredited online university, you need to get license to work as (RN) Registered Nurse or (LPN) Licensed Practical/Vocational Nurse (LVN). It is necessary to get registered in the state where you are working professionally. You will have to take the NCLEX-RN® or NCLEX-PN® license examination to become licensed nurse.

Qualities of Good Nurse

Besides having these degrees a good nurse must have following qualities.

• Nurses must have leadership and organizational skill
• They have to be polite and flexible.
• They must have courage to face crisis and stay calm in bad conditions.
• With good sense of humor nurses must have sympathetic nature.
• A good nurse should have problem solving skills to tackle any problem.



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