Choosing a career for the rest of your life is a monumental decision and not one that anybody should make lightly. One of the biggest concerns that many people have when they are selecting a career is whether they will be able to stick with it for the long-term. Even if you are passionate about something now, you never know what life will throw at you in the future or whether a particular subject will be able to hold your interests efficiently to sustain a whole career.
Nursing is one of the safest career choices out there because it is a truly recession-proof career and one that offers qualified workers opportunities with a whole range of different industries they can enter. Nurses can choose from a whole host of different disciplines, each of which will lead them towards a different potential career. Below are five of the awesome things that you can do with a nursing degree and why you should consider studying for one.
Why Study Nursing?
There are numerous things that have traditionally drawn so many students towards nursing as a potential degree and career path. There is definitely a lot to like about nursing as a career, especially if you are someone who values opportunities for progression in the long term.
Nurses provide a service to the public that is absolutely essential as our civilization simply could not function without a healthcare system. As a result, the nursing profession is about as recession-proof as a job can be. This kind of job security is difficult to come by and is a feature of nursing jobs throughout the sector. As we will discuss, a nursing degree is the first step towards a whole range of different career paths, each of which presenting nurses with many potential benefits.
Whether you choose a nursing role that involves working with different patients on a daily basis or the same patients for an extended period of time, you will find the work of a nurse to be both varied and rewarding. No matter where you work, you will have the opportunity to make a real difference to the level of care that patients receive. If you aren’t contributing directly to their care, you will be contributing to the advancement of the profession that is responsible for delivering it.
Not only will you have the opportunity to help patients in a variety of different ways and deploy a whole range of different skills, but you will also be able to control the rate of your own advancement. All nursing experience is useful, and you can transition between different disciplines and specialties as you see fit.
As soon as you have earned your initial nursing qualification, you will then be able to earn subsequent degrees and advance at a rate of your choosing. Most careers will leave workers at the mercy of their employers when it comes to advancing their careers, but nursing is different.
You can even use a nursing degree earned in the United States to secure a nursing job elsewhere in the world. Not many degrees can so easily be used to secure jobs around the world, but nursing is an exception.
Below are five awesome career paths that will be open to those who study for a nursing degree. These careers cover a range of industries and disciplines, but each will require the skills and dedication of a nurse.
Physicians Nurse
Not everyone who aspires to become a nurse aspires to work in the hospital environment. In fact, some people will not work at their best in this kind of environment and will be more useful to patients elsewhere. For many of these nurses, the physician’s office is a natural home. In general, physicians will not be dealing with the same kind of traumatic injuries and emergencies that hospitals handle daily. Appointments tend to be more routine and the treatments much less dramatic.
A nurse in a physician’s office will still be assisting the physician in delivering patient care and will also have to undertake a variety of duties such as routine examinations of patients and initial interviews. Much of this work is the same as what nurses in hospitals do, but there is more to both roles than this.
Working in a physician’s office is also an excellent first nursing job for those who want to ensure that this is the right profession for them before they commit too deeply to it. You can gain plenty of experience in a physician’s office, and it can be every bit as educational as a hospital or similar setting.
Nurse Informatics Specialist
Data has always been important in medicine. Historically, scientific inquiry and data have both guided and shaped the evolution of the field of medicine, and they both continue to do so today day. A nurse informatics specialist undertakes many of the same duties as a nurse. In fact, in some cases, they also function as a normal member of staff.
What makes a nurse informatics specialist different is that they are trained in how to gather data for the purposes of statistical analysis. The role they perform is absolutely essential in enabling the field of nursing to continue to advance, although it is not the kind of job that we generally associated with nurses.
Without the availability of high-quality data from data specialists, we would be flying blind in terms of trying to advance the field of medicine. In order to work as a nurse informatics specialist, nurses will need to have at least a registered nurse degree, although a senior degree is often preferable. However, nurses can take on this role at any point in their careers and many will do so from the earliest opportunity.
School Nurse
If you are looking for a less stressful environment in which to treat patients, then working as a school nurse is one of the most laid-back options there is. That’s not to say that you won’t be working hard or doing something useful – you will be an important part of the school infrastructure and can make a real difference to students’ lives. For anyone who enjoys working with children and wants to work in the nursing industry, working as a school nurse can be a very rewarding way of achieving both.
School nurses will often be involved not only in treating children but also in educating them and providing them with impartial advice. This particular facet of the role has become more important in recent years and is one of the main reasons that lots of people choose to enter the profession.
Family Nurse
There are many nursing roles that will see you working with the same patients on a daily basis, but when you are a family nurse, you often get to work with the same patients for more or less their entire lives.
In order to work as a family nurse, you will first need to work your way up to the doctorate level. You can then take a look at some dnp fnp programs that will train you to work as a family practitioner.
The role that family nurse practitioners fill within the health care market is a vital one. While all nursing positions are rewarding in their own way, there is something unique even amongst nursing roles about being able to treat the same patients for the duration of their lives. The family nurse practitioner position also comes with a very good salary in comparison to similar nursing roles. Needless to say, this has historically been one of the biggest draws for nursing students.
Research Nurse
It’s easy to forget that nursing is ultimately a science and that, as a result, it often attracts scientifically minded people to its ranks. Therefore, the position of research nurse is one that has a wide appeal to many of those who have been working in the nursing industry for some time. Experienced nurses will understand that as rewarding as the profession can be, there are still problems with it and numerous shortfalls in the way that we approach nursing as a society.
The work of a research nurse is not all to do with dry, scientific trials. On the contrary, research nurses are often looking at data from hospitals and using it to help plan better administration and management outcomes. In order to do this, research nurses will need to work with a variety of other people, including administrators and other frontline nursing staff. This is an excellent role for those who enjoy collaboration and want to work with others towards making the nursing profession even better.
Research nurses will also find opportunities to undertake research in a variety of different settings within the nursing sector. This means that you can specialize in research in a particular area such as research into medical devices or patient care outcomes.
There are nursing roles out there to suit most peopleif you are prepared to look. It is easy to understand why the appeal of nursing is so widespread, and the 5 options above are just a small fraction of the many opportunities that are waiting out there for new nurses to seize.
