When you go into nursing in the first instance, you may train at a general level before deciding to specialize at a later date. There are all sorts of different areas in which you can put your time and attention. It is these that we are going to focus on in the following blog post. Hopefully, this will give you a better overall picture of the field of nursing and what you are able to do within it.
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Critical Care Nurse
A critical care nurse operates under a high level of pressure on a daily basis and tends to be a more experienced member of the team. This is largely down to the fact that this is a job that has plenty of stress. You will find yourself working in a fast-paced environment in which you are expected to make plenty of important split-second decisions. Of course, there will still be plenty of standard nursing procedures involved including completing assessments and performing tests. You will have to be confident working with people from a wide range of different specialities including doctors, surgeons, and nursing assistants.
Psychiatric Nurse
The past few years have seen a much higher level of emphasis put on mental health, and we are getting better at recognizing and treating a wide range of different disorders. With this widespread awareness comes an increased need for people with a specialism in the area of mental health. This is where you will come in as a psychiatric nurse. In general, you will not be working with different patients on a regular basis. Instead, you will be involved with a highly select group to provide them with extensive and far-reaching support. As such, you will need to feel confident in building up relationships and getting to know people who are suffering from a wide range of different disorders. You can find yourself working in a wide range of different environments from hospitals to care facilities and even prisons. Home visits are another common factor in this job.
Paediatric Nurse
When you work as a paediatric nurse, you will find yourself working mainly with children. Of course, you are going to need to be able to build up a strong relationship with the family as a whole. With this in mind, you can take a look at the best online FNP programs. As you would expect, being good with children is one of the most important factors involved in working in a job such as this one. Of course, there are bound to be challenges along the way, and you still have to make some tricky decisions regarding proper care. Good communication skills will certainly stand you in good stead as parents need to be updated on exactly what is going on at all times.
Cardiology Nurse
Some of the most serious conditions that people can find themselves suffering from are directly related to the heart. So, if you want to help out with this problem, becoming a cardiology nurse is certainly a good way to go. There are all sorts of different aspects to this job, and it is not all about dealing with people who are in life-threatening situations. You will also be helping people out when it comes to their medication requirements, as well as putting together lifestyle plans. People who have been through serious heart trouble have to make adjustments accordingly. Providing reassurance to people who go through heart conditions is extremely important as this can be a very scary time for all sorts of different people.
Theater Nurse
A theater nurse is someone who is directly involved in the operating room, which will see you working alongside people from all sorts of specialities with the aim of getting people out the other side successfully. First of all, you have the preoperative stage, which involves running a patient assessment and explaining the risks and benefits of the surgery etc. After that, you have anesthetics, which may involve you supporting the anesthetist and preparing any equipment needed for the operation. Of course, you also have the surgery phase, which involves getting the necessary equipment ready and preparing to hand these over to the surgeon as and when this is required. Finally, there is the recovery phase, which involves your direct support after the procedure has taken place, keeping track of the recovery and providing any treatment that is necessary along the way.
Geriatric Nurse
We have already talked about the individual aspects of becoming a paediatric nurse, but if you want to practice nursing at the other side of people’s lives, working as a geriatric nurse is the way to go about this. This is a broader field than some of the other ones that we have already discussed above, and it is one that can see you working in a vast variety of different environments. Instead of being based in a hospital, you may instead be working in places such as hospices or care homes. Of course, there is the need for hospital-based members of staff as well in environments such as accident and emergency and acute care. Again, this is an area of specialism in which good communication skills can prove to be invaluable as you will work with all sorts of different medical professionals. Building up relationships is also an important part of the job. The aging process is one that all of us find scary, so the ability to talk people through it with warmth and understanding can go a long way in this particular branch of nursing.
Travel Nurses
In case you enjoy having a sense of personal freedom, have itchy feet but still want to pursue a career path in nursing, you should consider a career as a travel nurse. They are RNs from different clinical backgrounds who work for independent staffing medical centers or hospitals that have short-term staffing vacancies. Travel nurses are an important part of the health care team because they help bridge the gap between unfilled positions and patients needing urgent care in the field of nursing.
The adventure and excitement of seeking new job opportunities, along with higher-than-average pay, are facets of travel nursing which many professionals find attractive.
Though there are a range of other aspects of nursing that we could discuss in greater detail, these are just some of the main ones that you could find yourself involved in. Ultimately, you are likely to start off in general nursing and decide your area of specialism further down the line. At the same time, you may decide to switch further down the line as your experience develops, or you take training courses.