Careers in Nursing
Nursing is a profession of many possibilities and opportunities! You use your head, heart, and hands. You can work with people of all ages or with a specific group (e.g., children, elderly, or those with specific diseases or conditions). You can help people who are sick or work to keep them well. If you are an "owl" type, you can work evenings or nights. You can even choose to work full-time or part-time.
Many different settings are available to nurses. The majority (62%) work in hospitals, but others work in places such as nursing homes, home health care, clinics or doctors' offices, public health, occupational health settings, and schools. The military offers many opportunities for nurses, and may even fund an education. Advanced practice nurses (those with a master's degree) can be found in roles as diverse as nurse practitioner, researcher, clinical specialist, nurse midwife, nurse anesthetist, nurse manager/administrator, and nursing educator. Some combine nursing with other fields such as law, business, pastoral ministry, and computers/informatics.
There is a great demand for nurses right now, and many more (400,000 to 800,000) will be needed over the next 20 years or more. Massachusetts will need about 17,000 more nurses by the year 2020. The average starting salary for a new Registered Nurse (RN) is about $45,000 in the Greater Boston area. Nurses generally earn even more than that because they receive additional pay for working evening, night, and/or weekend shifts. Right now, many hospitals are offering bonuses for newly hired nurses.
There is also a great need for nurses who can speak various languages and who come from a variety of ethnic and cultural backgrounds so they can effectively care for patients from the many different ethnic groups that we have in this country. There's a need for more men to go into nursing, even as the number of men in nursing continues to grow.
Because of the current and increasing shortage of nurses, there are many incentives being developed by state and federal governments, colleges and universities, and health care agencies to encourage people to enter nursing and to stay in it. Be sure to look for scholarships and loans that are available in return for working in certain areas of the state or country.
The title Registered Nurse is a legal one awarded by each state upon successful completion of an approved educational program and the licensing examination (NCLEX-RN). The most common educational programs are a two-year associate degree program (usually in a community college) and a four-year baccalaureate program. Licensed Practical Nurses (LPNs) typically attend a 12-month program, take a separate licensing examination, and have a different and more limited scope of practice.
Editorial provided by Laurel Eisenhauer, RN, PhD, FAAN, Professor of Nursing and Associate Dean at Boston College's William F. Connell School of Nursing.
