Health Care Industry's Growing Profession

The nursing profession is one of the most needed careers today. There have been shortages of trained and licensed nurses everywhere especially in the United States which is the reason why the nurses working in the health facilities have a lot of responsibilities and take different roles.

The different roles that nurses take include providing bedside care to the patients and ensuring that each patient receives the utmost attention and care. The nurses are also responsible in giving the treatments prescribed by the physician to the patients. These roles that the nurses take are not just limited to hospital settings. A lot of other job opportunities for nurses are already present including nursing job in the military, positions in public relations or health insurance companies, job openings at schools as school nurses or educators and opportunities as travel nurses. Nurses providing service at home, nurses working in the government also known as public health nurses and even nurses becoming writers who write about the industry where they belong are the other careers that a trained and licensed nurse can do these days.

To be a registered nurse and be able to work for the different job opportunities available as mentioned, one should enter a training program specifically designed for nurses. There are different programs available such as entry-level training program, Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN), Master of Science in nursing (MSN) and a doctorate program (PhD).

The entry-level training program involves a two-year degree of teaching students the essential information a nurse must know to be able to practice nursing effectively and safely. Training courses are also included in this program for the students to develop the important skills that nurses should have.

An entry-level nursing graduate can also be hired in a health facility where he would attend an orientation for a period of six weeks to familiarize him with the job that he should do in the hospital. After the orientation, evaluation in terms of the performance is done. After a good evaluation, he can then be trained again to another aspect of the health care industry. This training/orientation can be repeatedly done until the hospital is sure that he can provide quality health care in any nursing fields.

The BSN program is taken up for four years and is more detailed and has a wider range of coverage than the two-year associate program. Students under this program are expected to gain an extensive knowledge on the medical field and health care. They are also trained to deal with real-time situations where problem solving skills and critical thinking are also developed. Most institutions acquire nurses with a BSN degree thus more people take this program.

The MSN degree can be obtained by already licensed nurses who have been in the profession for a time and still wanted to learn more about their craft. Nurses who have this degree are often given greater responsibilities such as being nurse practitioners or administrators.

Once the MSN degree is obtained, the PhD or the doctorate level can also be acquired through another period of study. Nurses with this degree can be placed in any position in any health care aspect.

Any person who is interested in health care should have a nursing career since it is the most progressive field in the industry and a lot of job opportunities are readily available once you are already a registered nurse.