Nursing degrees are one of the most popular degree options out there for students today. A big part of the reason that qualifying as a nurse appeals to so many people, other than the rewarding nature of the work, is that a nursing degree will open up a lot of potential career paths for graduates. Here are just four things that you can do with a nursing degree under your belt.
Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse
Psychiatric mental health care nurses work in a variety of settings with patients who have psychological and mental health issues. Nurses are needed in most regular hospitals, but can also choose to work in a specialist facility that deals exclusively with mental health patients. Mental health is a much more common problem than a lot of people realize; it is something that will touch most of our lives in one way or another. As a result, working as a mental health nurse can often be a deeply personal experience for many people.
In order to work as a psychiatric nurse, nurses will first need to earn a registered nursing degree and will then have to advance to the associate nursing qualification. With these degrees under your belt, you can then apply to psychiatric hospitals to work as a mental health nurse. You will receive special training on how to provide psychiatric care, which can be quite different from physical health care.
Family Nurse Practitioner
Family nurse practitioners work in healthcare services that are family-focused. This means that family nurse practitioners work with patients of all ages and will often see many of their patients from the time they are infants until they are adolescents, and many will continue to work with their patients into adulthood. It is this continuity of patients that makes working as a family nurse practitioner so appealing to many people. Most nurses will only encounter their patients one or two times throughout their entire lives. However, family nurse practitioners can expect to see many of their patients time and time again.
Many nurses prefer working as a family nurse as it enables them to watch their patients grow and to be involved in providing them with healthcare services from a young age. Throughout the US, family nurses are able to command a higher salary than regular nurses, in addition to the other perks of working as a family nurse practitioner. For example, the average FNP salary in texas is $211,780, compared to $75,510 for a registered nurse.
Nursing Informatics Specialist
Data is everywhere in the modern world, and we use it for a range of different purposes. Within the field of healthcare, data enables us to make more informed decisions about patient care and about the way that we organize and run healthcare facilities. However, while data is a very powerful and valuable resource to have, it is only as good as the people who are gathering and analyzing it.
Nurse informatics specialists are trained in data analytics as well as nursing, enabling them to combine both disciplines together in order to improve their own nursing abilities, as well as the information systems that the healthcare facility they work for is built upon. If you are interested in numbers and data, then working as an informatics specialist is a very rewarding path to take. Not only this but an informatics specialty enables many nurses to take a more active role in planning and strategizing for their place of work.
School Nurse
Lots of Americans will have fond memories of their school nurse. The school nurse has a very important job, providing on-site nursing and healthcare services and advice to students, sometimes teachers as well. Depending on what kind of school they work in, a school nurse can end up working with children of just about any age, as well as young adults.
Nurses who prefer working with children will find the role of the school nurse ideal. Many nurses also find it to be a very rewarding career to pursue because it is just as much about educating children and providing them with preventative health advice.
The above careers are all excellent choices for any qualified nurse who wants to make a real difference to their communities. However, they are just a small selection of the many nursing careers available today. Once you have earned your registered nursing degree, you can then immediately begin to think about what you will specialize in and what kind of environment you want to work in for the long-term.
