The health care system is an ever-expanding field and the demand for medical practitioners is continually on the rise. Opportunities for nurses, an integral and important part of the health care system, has evolved into so many specialized fields to the point than anybody who wishes to enter the field has a lot of options to choose from.
Following are the more popular fields of nursing:
Travel Nursing
It is a new career in nursing that evolved out of the shortage of nurses in many areas of the world and is filled by creating short-term positions for nurses that travel from other areas. Travel nurses may be compared to trouble shooters who will stay in an area, fix the problem, and then move to another area where their services may be needed.
Travel nursing provides higher compensation, usually with bonuses and incentives like free travel and housing accommodations.
Military Nursing
The military is one of the biggest employers in the country with hundreds of thousands of personnel deployed in the country and other locations abroad. The military establishment also has one of the most advanced health care systems in the country and as such, they hire a large number of medical professionals including nurses.
Military nurses receive high pay plus the opportunities for further education, career enhancement and travel. Military nurses get the added opportunity of getting trained to use the most sophisticated medical equipment in the world.
This field of nursing also attract adventurous individuals who find glamour working in or near battlefields or war zones.
Forensic Nursing
Forensic nursing is the clinical practice of the bio psychosocial aspects of healthcare as it is applied to the law. Forensic nurses deal with the investigation and treatment of trauma, death, and violent or criminal activity within a given community. Some of the aspects of forensic nursing are: sexual assault, death investigation, forensic psychiatric nursing, forensic photography, and legal nursing consulting.
Opportunities are open in the medical examiner’s office, law enforcement agencies, and in specialized hospital units. Salaries of forensic nurses can go as high as $100 per hour.
Legal Nurse Consultant
Legal nurse consultants typically provide services to private and corporate lawyers to provide professional opinions on many products and services. They are usually hired by pharmaceuticals and chemical companies to provide their inputs on medications and devices that require review and approval by federal agencies. They also provide expert opinions in courtrooms and other governmental agencies that hear cases or complaints about a particular pharmaceutical or chemical product.
Surgical Nursing
Surgical nurses assist doctors during surgical procedures. Surgical nurses work in pre-operating units, operating rooms, and post-operation units of a hospital. Surgical nurses need to be Registered Nurses with special training in surgical procedures. Salaries of surgical nurses can go higher than $80,000 per annum.
Certified RN Anaesthetist (CRNA)
A Nurse Anaesthetist or Certified Registered Nurse Anaesthetist (CRNA) is a registered nurse who had obtained training and certification to provide anaesthesia services that is typically provided by an anaesthesiologist who is a medical doctor. The function specifically concerns the patient’s well-being before, during, and after any treatment or procedure that required anaesthesia.
A Bachelor of Science Degree in Nursing is required. CRNAs are well-paid nurses, often times exceeding an annual salary of $165,000.
Nurse Practitioner
A Nurse Practitioner works as primary and specialty care provider, giving a blend of services that include nursing and health care to patients and families in a community. You will find nurse practitioners in family practice, adult practice, women’s health, paediatrics, acute care, geriatrics, mental health, and neonatology.
Nurse practitioners have advanced education. In addition to the basic requirement of Bachelors degree, they have a Master’s Degree or even a Doctorate Degree in Nursing, giving them advanced and specialized training to administer many branches of health care services for the patients.
Nurse Practitioner, being an advanced field, has a limited number of practitioners thus they command a very high salary compared to other fields of nursing.
Clinical Nurse Specialist
A clinical nurse specialist (CNS) is an advanced practice nurse, typically with graduate preparation such as masteral or doctoral degree from a program that prepares CNSs. They are clinical experts in the diagnosis and treatment of illnesses. They are also involved in the delivery of evidence-based nursing interventions. The areas of clinical nurse specialist are patient/family, nursing personnel and system/network organization.
The CNS role developed in the acute care setting but is not involved also in non-acute setting. Both in acute and non-acute settings, a clinical nurse specialist is a valuable resource for staff development, being an expert clinician and adept in improving quality and conserving resources in the organizational and system setting.
Clinical nurse specialists are paid close to $80,000 annually, a considerably large amount compared to other fields of nursing.
Staff Nurse
Staff nurses can be called RGN or RMN, depending on the field they belong to. A Registered General Nurse can work without specific specializations and can work in various settings. A Registered Mental Nurse is those who work in the psychiatric or mental health field.
Staff nurses can work in home or the community health field, meaning they can work in community clinics. They can also work in hospitals choosing from many options such as in-patient or out-patient units, the intensive care unit, the medical-surgical unit, and in any other unit of the hospital.
The main core of a staff nurse’s duty is to provide nursing care to those who need it. The staff nurse is responsible for the well-being of the patient when he is under the watch of the nurse. Staff nurses usually work as part of a group or a team that is responsible for the evaluation of the ongoing practices of the hospital or clinic.
Flight Nurse
A flight nurse works in both emergency and non-emergency transport of patients from their homes or scenes of accidents to a hospital. Flight nurses handle medical evacuation using aircraft. They are typically trained on handling trauma cases and other medical emergencies.
Salaries of flight nurses exceed $60,000 per annum.
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