If you like helping people and want job security in your career, you should seriously consider getting a nursing degree. The number of US nursing jobs in 2020 crossed more than 3 million, and demand is not likely to come down any soon. If you choose a career in nursing, you’ll get good earnings and have a rewarding future when it comes to your personal growth. What you do as a nurse will be depending upon your area of specialty. However, you can primarily expect to monitor and provide care for patients. However, apart from this, there are many areas where your nursing degree can come in handy if you want to do more than nurse patients in a typical hospital environment. Let’s look at what these are:
1. Work towards a leadership role
If you have a bachelor’s degree in nursing along with solid on-the-job experience, you may consider yourself in administrative, management, or nursing leadership roles. Some of the jobs that may be suitable for you are:
• Director of Nursing
• Nurse Administrator
• Chief Nursing Officer (CNO)
• Nurse Manager
• Healthcare Manager
Since there is currently a shortage of healthcare professionals who have both skills and relevant experience, nurses with suitable degrees and sufficient experience are much in demand.
2. Become a travel nurse
Do you get excited by the idea of traveling to new places, meeting people, and building up experience in various healthcare institutions? If yes, then you should consider a career as a travel nurse. You might be wondering, what is a travel nurse? As a travel nurse, you’ll work for an independent staffing company that recruits Registered Nurses (RNs) for nursing positions in the US and even abroad. After all, there is a shortage of qualified nurses, making it a challenge for clinics and hospitals to fulfill their staffing needs. If you are thinking of becoming a travel nurse, you should check out the nursing specialties in demand.
3. Become a nurse practitioner
A nurse practitioner (NP) could be an exciting career path for you as you’ll be having more authority than a registered nurse typically have. What’s more, your responsibilities towards patients will be similar to those that a doctor has. A nurse practitioner can serve as specialty care or primary care providers and usually focus their attention on the elderly, children, or families. If they work as clinicians, they’ll be focusing on disease prevention and health promotion in patients. With the US healthcare system under strain due to the Covid-19 pandemic, family nurse practitioners have helped during the pandemic.
4. Go for a career in Information Technology (IT)
IT is an excellent career path to choose if you want to have a considerable impact on healthcare delivery without dealing with high-stress levels that usually come with patient care. IT careers in nursing are becoming more and more critical as a result of technology redefining healthcare. As an example, nursing informatics specialists act as “technology liaisons” for hospital staff along with delivering their nursing duties. They could be involved in the testing of or even the design of new IT solutions or the implementation of new processes meant to improve patient care.
5. Work for insurance companies
If you are a nurse, then you could also consider working in an insurance company. Insurance companies try to maintain transparency when it comes to healthcare processes and costs. They do this to evaluate risk and set insurance premium rates as accurately as they can. Nurses are invaluable when it comes to collecting data, interpreting it, and especially understanding how to act on the data. A nurse who works for an insurance company may perform audits, medical coding, or clinical research.
