Are you interested in becoming a nurse? Below we have provided descriptions and profiles of some of the major career choices available to nurses. The options are truly limitless as far as the types of roles from which you may choose and settings where your knowledge of nursing care can be put to use.
Nursing Career Specialties
Learn about many of the career options available to registered nurses. Each of the career profiles below gives a description of what a position in that particular specialty might entail, the roles filled by nurses in that specialty, the settings where they might work, as well as information about qualifications and certification.
Oncology Nursing: Passionate Cancer Care
Learn about a career in the rapidly evolving field of oncology nursing. Find out how highly skilled oncology nurses care for cancer patients and their families.
Emergency Nursing: Managed Chaos
Find out about emergency nursing careers. Discover how they work in an often chaotic environment but keep their cool as they care for patients during the initial phases of acute illness or trauma.
Neonatal Nursing: A Passion for Newborns
Explore careers available to neonatal nurses. Learn how these remarkable nurses work to care for infants who experience a wide range of medical problems at or shortley after birth.
School Nursing: Caring for Students
Read about school nursing careers. Find out how these nurses working in educational institutions at all levels from elementary schools to colleges care for students and promote their life-long health and achievement.
Perioperative Nursing: Working in the OR
Discover facts about a career in perioperative nursing. Learn how they not only provide intraoperative care during surgery, but also provide care during preoperative and postoperative phases of surgery.
Psychiatric/Mental Health Nursing
Learn about psychiatric/mental health nursing careers. Discover how the roles of psychiatric nurses has drastically expanded since the 1800s when nurses first began working in mental hospitals.
Forensic Nursing: Where Nursing Meets Law
Find out about careers in forensic nursing. Read how they care for victims and perpetrators of traumatic events or criminal acts and recognize, collect, and document forensic evidence for use in legal proceedings.
Orthopedic Nursing: It’s Not Just Bones!
Explore careers in orthopedic nursing. Learn how they prevent and treat a wide range of diseases, disorders, and injuries of the musculoskeletal system’s bones, muscles, ligaments, and tendons.
Graduate Nursing Careers
There are certain careers in nursing that require a graduate degree in nursing: a Master of Science in Nursing (MSN) degree, a Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) degree, or a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree. Such degrees expand the roles that nurses can play in the field of health care. Many such graduate degree programs allow students to obtain advanced training in the specialties listed above.
Advanced Practice Nursing
Read about careers in advanced practice nursing. Find out about the various types of advanced practice nurses including nurse practitioners, clinical nurse specialists, nurse anesthetists, and nurse-midwives.
Nurse Educators
Discover information about a career as a nurse educator. Read about the various settings where nurses can work in an educator role and the various roles that they can play in a educator position.
Clinical Nurse Leaders
Find out about a career as a clinical nurse leader. Learn how they are trained as advanced generalists similar to the way advanced practice registered nurses are trained as advanced specialists.
Nurse Administrators/Nurse Executives
Explore a career as a nurse administrator. Discover how nurse administrators are prepared for advanced practice in a variety of leadership and managerial roles in a many settings within the health care system.
Advanced Practice Nursing Careers
Those interested in pursuing a career as an advanced practice registered nurse will need to choose between careers as a nurse practitioner, clinical nurse specialist, nurse anesthetist, or nurse-midwife. As a nurse practitioner or clinical nurse specialist, you will also typically choose one or more specialty and/or subspecialty areas in which to focus their training.
Nurse Practitioner Careers
Read about nurse practitioner careers. Find a sample of roles that nurse practitioners can play in today’s health care delivery system, settings where they work, and areas in which they can specialize.
Clinical Nurse Specialist Careers
Discover facts about a career as a clinical nurse specialist. Learn how they work to improve patient outcomes and nursing care through a focus on improving the three spheres of influence.
Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist Careers
Learn about certified registered nurse anesthetist careers. Find out about their scope of practice, the wide variety of settings where they can work, and the requirements for becoming a CRNA.
Certified Nurse-Midwife Careers
Find out what a career as certified nurse-midwife is like. Discover what nurse-midwives do, their scope of practice, settings in which they work, and what is required to become a certified nurse-midwife.
