Nursing Career Choices

Nursing Career ChoicesWhen you graduate from nursing school and pass thestate licensure exam, you can start applying forwork. While some will work in a hospital, othersmay find employment in labs, schools, privatecompanies and non-profit organizations. This iswhen your nursing career choices are available toyou.The nice thing about being a nurse is thatwherever you work, everyday is different than theday before. Why? Because of the human factor asnew patients are brought in and old ones aredischarged. This means that in the field of

nursing, you will never get tired because changeis always constant.Let 抯 take a look at the two nurses. One who isa resident nurse or RN and the other a licensedpracticing nurse or LPN. Yes, they are both nursesbut what makes the two different is the fact thatthe RN is a specialist while the LPN is ageneralist.The LPN reports to an RN. This is the person thatmakes the rounds and takes the patient 抯 bloodpressure and temperature. They administer shotsand monitor the catheters. The resident nurse cando the same thing but they are more concernedabout other things which is why they have theopportunity to work for instance in ambulatorycare, diabetes management, cardiac and vascularnurse, dermatology, HIV/AIDS, oncology,pediatrics and a lot more.If you don 抰 want your career to be stagnant as

an LPN, you can go to school and work at the sametime until you are able to earn your degree andfinally earn the title of a resident nurse.Another career choice that can you places is bybeing a nurse practitioner. Being in thisposition allows you to perform many of thefunctions that doctors do that includesprescribing medication. They handle the mostcommon illnesses as well as provide counselingand prevention. For this you need to get a master抯 in nursing. A study shows that NP 抯 make anaverage of about $61,000 per annum.Since we are talking about advanced degrees,another career choice is that of the nurseanesthesiologist. When a patient is undergoingsurgery, this person is there to make sure theright dosage is given so the operation is painless.This is considered to one of the highest payingnursing jobs today.

Heart disease is one of the leading causes ofdeath in the US. While there are steps being takento reduce these figures, there are still patientsthat have to be treated and that is where cardiaccare nursing comes in. Cardiac care nurses workwith doctors as they perform angioplasty, bypasssurgery or install pacemakers. They work in thehospital and at times conduct house calls.Some patients require long term care. For that,you need a case manager nurse that will keep trackof the patient 抯 condition at the same time ina cost effective matter. These individualsusually help the young and the elderly who aresuffering from illnesses such as AIDS, cancer orheart disease.There are other nursing careers aside from thosementioned. What happens after you graduate willdetermine how successful you will become in thefuture. Nurses who want to go on further areadvised to take up advance courses in nursing and

then specialize in a particular field.