Nursing Careers
Nursing is a career filled with endless personal and professional rewards. If you choose nursing, you are choosing to spend your life helping others, using skills that blend scientific knowledge with compassion and caring. There are few professions that offer such a rewarding combination of high tech and high touch.
Nursing is the nation's largest health care profession, with 2.6 million registered nurses (RNs), and many more needed in the future. Nurses are the largest single component of any hospital staff - the primary providers of hospital patient care - and, they deliver most of the nation's nursing home care. They work in a variety of other settings as well. (See nursing opportunities.) With the aging population growing steadily, there will be no shortage of jobs for nurses well into the future. In most parts of the country, including Maryland, the average age of nurses is growing, meaning that more nurses are retiring, thus furthering the nursing shortage. So, as the current crop of Baby Boomer-age nurses nears retirement, fewer trained nurses are in the pipeline to replace them. This translates into more job opportunities with the potential of higher starting salaries. ^ top What do nurses do? Nursing is a blend of science and technology with the art of caring and compassion. Every day on the job nurses use the science they learned in nursing school. And, when employed, they take continuing education courses on a regular basis to keep up with the latest in the medical and nursing sciences. Nurses work closely with doctors and other health care professionals, and serve as the advocates for patients and families. Ongoing advances in technology - which are helping people live longer, healthier lives - have made nursing even more rewarding to those who like developing their skills in this area. Nurses do:
Assessments: Nurses gather information about the patient's physical condition, emotional state, lifestyle, family, hopes, fears, etc. Diagnoses: Nurses identify the patient's problems or needs, which often are emotional or spiritual, as well as physical. Planning: Nurses find ways to address these problems and set specific goals for improvement. Whenever possible, nurses encourage patients to participate in planning their care. Implementation: The nursing plan is put into effect. For example, nurses may administer