Registered Nurse
Registered nurses are the most prevalent health care workers in the United States. According the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the industry was responsible for 2.5 million of the nation's jobs in 2006. RNs work in physicians' offices, home health care agencies, outpatient treatment centers, hospitals, and various other health care facilities. Experienced nurses often become involved in educational services, government agencies, and social assistance programs as well. Of these work settings, hospitals employ the most RNs, generating approximately 60 percent of the country's nursing positions.Even though RNs have the option of specializing in hundreds of different conditions, treatments, and patient populations, they all perform basic duties specific to the nursing occupation. These tasks include treating patients, providing medical advice and support, assisting during diagnostic tests, recording patients' symptoms and medical histories, and administering treatment and medications. RNs help with rehabilitation as well, advising patients on everything from diet and exercise to physical therapy. Even though the primary concern of RNs is to look after and care for patients, the field is shifting some of its focus towards preventive work. A secondary objective of the nursing profession is to educate the public about symptoms of diseases and strategies for disease prevention.
Before becoming a registered nurse, most people complete two to four years of intensive training. The nature of your training depends largely on your specialty. For instance, if you want to work as a hospice nurse and care for terminally ill patients outside of the hospital, you would enroll in different courses than someone pursuing a career as a trauma nurse in an emergency room. The most common specialties can be divided into four categories, including work setting or type of treatment, disease or ailment, organ or body system type, and patient population.
RNs that treat people with a variety of illnesses and injuries on an outpatient basis are called ambulatory care nurses, and this is one instance of RNs specializing in a type of treatment or work setting. Ambulatory care nurses usually work in physicians' offices and clinics, or they experiment with the telehealth industry and provide care over the internet. If you choose to work as a diabetes management nurse, your specialty would fall under the disease or ailment category. RNs working in this field teach patients about proper nutrition and show them how to test their blood sugar levels and inject insulin.
Respiratory nurses specialize in a particular body system. These RNs care for patients with respiratory disorders such as asthma, tuberculosis, and cystic fibrosis. The final RN specialty area is patient population. Nurses who choose to specialize in neonatology would fall under this category because they work primarily with newborns. It is customary for RNs to combine specialties from more than one category, such as patient population and type of disease. An example of this would be geriatric oncology nurses, or RNs who assist elderly patients suffering from cancer.
Nursing can be an active and sometimes dangerous profession. RNs who work in hospitals and nursing care centers are overseeing patients that require 24-hour care. Because of this need, many of the nurses at these facilities work a portion of nights, weekends, and holidays and spend the majority of their time walking or standing. RNs that treat patients with infectious conditions must abide by strict guidelines to ensure their safety and the safety of others.
In order to become a registered nurse in the U.S., you need to complete an approved nursing program or earn your associate's or your bachelor's degree in nursing from an accredited institution. Students must also pass a national licensing exam called the NCLEX-RN to fulfill licensure requirements for their state. In May of 2006, the median annual earnings of RNs were reported as $57,280. The middle 50 percent of nurses earned between $47,710 and $69,850 a year. [Figures including job projections, reported median incomes, and salary estimates were revised to reflect data from 2006 on 2/20/08.]