How To Become A Registered Nurse Articles

What Does a Registered Nurse Exercise? Your 2022 Career Guide

Written past Coursera • Updated on May iii, 2022

Registered nurses work in a diversity of settings to provide medical treat patients and support physicians. Larn more about this highly in-demand task.

A younger nurse wearing a face mask, blue scrubs, and stethoscope assists an older women in a yellow sweater

Registered nurses make upwardly the largest group of employees within the health care system, co-ordinate to the Usa Agency of Labor Statistics [one]. Because the job is e'er in loftier need, those who complete RN programs can usually count on competitive wages and chore security once they begin practicing.

What is a registered nurse?

A registered nurse (RN) provides and coordinates care for patients in settings similar hospitals, doctor'due south offices, clinics, schools, home health care, nursing homes, and other medical facilities. As an RN, you'll also piece of work to back up physicians and other medical professionals, as well as patients' families.

Depending on what setting you work in, your day-to-day tasks might include:

Administering medication
Dressing wounds
Monitoring vital signs
Inserting intravenous catheters
Creating a plan of care
Documenting patient information
Preparing patients for belch
Teaching patients and their families about various illnesses and treatments

Registered nurses may work in almost every type of medical facility, including hospitals, clinics, and medical offices, with patients from all walks of life. You may evangelize babies or work with the elderly, or you might provide basic start assistance or help treat serious diseases. No matter their differences, the American Nurses Association claims there is one single process with five components that all RNs follow [2]:

Assessment: Collect information about a patient'southward concrete and mental wellness, equally well as any helpful background information.

Diagnosis: Utilise your clinical cognition to make a judgment about actual or potential health needs.

Outcome/Planning: Based on the assessment and diagnosis, make goals for the patient and create a care plan.

Implementation: Document the care programme in the patient'due south record to ensure continuity of care.

Evaluation: Evaluate the patient's response to the intendance plan and make changes as necessary.

Types of registered nurses

In that location are dozens of types of registered nurses that piece of work across almost every field of medicine. This gives yous the flexibility to choose a career path based on your medical interests.

Blazon of registered nurse	What yous do
Cardiac registered nurse	Provide intendance for patients with heart-related problems, including those recovering from heart surgery
Critical care registered nurse	Provide care for patients in disquisitional status, such every bit those on life support or with a serious wound or injury
Dialysis registered nurse	Oversee dialysis treatment for patients with kidney failure
Emergency room registered nurse	Work in a fast-paced emergency room, evaluating and stabilizing patients with a variety of ailments
Geriatric registered nurse	Provide basic care for older adults
Obstetrics registered nurse	Provide care for pregnant women during pregnancy and childbirth
Oncology registered nurse	Work with cancer patients to monitor symptoms, provide pedagogy, and administer treatments
Orthopedic registered nurse	Provide treat patients with injuries and disease of the joints and bones
Pediatric registered nurse	Provide bones medical treat infants, children, and teenagers

How much does a registered nurse brand?

The average salary for a registered nurse in the United States is $77,600 per year, according to the U.s.a. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Hourly RNs brand, on average, $37.31 per 60 minutes. RNs working in governmental or infirmary settings tend to earn at the higher end of the pay scale [three].

How to go a registered nurse

Many registered nurses hold a Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) or an associate degree in nursing (ADN). There are also some infirmary-based programs that allow you to earn a nursing diploma within ane to two years. Once y'all graduate, you must pass the NCLEX-RN exam and fulfill any other requirements in the state where you want to practice.

Read more: Your Guide to Nursing Degrees and Certifications

Skills y'all'll need as an RN

If you lot relish working closely with people and experience passionate virtually helping others, a career in nursing could exist a adept fit. Successful RNs often have a set up of technical and workplace skills in common.

Technical skills

Check and monitor vital signs: Registered nurses must be able to bank check blood pressure, pulse rate, temperature, and respiration rate. It'due south besides important to know what normal ranges are for each specific type of patient.

Basic care skills: This might include dressing a wound, inserting a catheter, or cartoon blood.

Patient safety and well-being: RNs must sympathize how to keep a patient safe. This might include getting a patient from their bed to the bath without falling or keeping a room sanitary so there is no chance for infection.

Comfort with applied science: Virtually everything yous do requires technology, whether y'all're accessing patient records with a figurer or using a monitor to proceed a check on vital signs.

Administering medication: Giving a patient the wrong medication can accept serious consequences. You must know how to count and identify medications and understand what they treat.

Workplace skills

Advice: Yous'll be working nonstop with other people, including patients, physicians, and patients' families. Because you lot're normally caring for people who are sick or in pain, you may need to stay at-home when a patient is upset or aroused. You demand to be able to listen equally well as provide information in a mode that a patient tin understand, and yous'll even need to understand body language.

Leadership: As an RN, you have the opportunity to set a positive instance for those around you lot. You may likewise be responsible for managing nursing assistants and other staff members.

Flexibility: You lot never know what blazon of patient is going to walk through the door or when a current patient'southward condition will change. Be ready to reply to any state of affairs that arises.

Ability to work under pressure level: RNs who work in an emergency room or ICU must be able to handle stressful situations, but any registered nurse can discover themselves with a patient whose life is threatened past an injury or illness. You must be able to think critically and react to stressful situations in a timely way.

Collaboration and teamwork: Throughout your career, you'll probable encounter physicians, therapists, nursing assistants, function managers, and countless other people who all take the same goal: healthy patients. Beingness able to collaborate on a plan of care will provide your patients with the all-time outcome.

RN career path

Once y'all become a registered nurse, you have many paths to cull from. You tin can choose a specialty, such as critical intendance or geriatrics. You tin work in a fast-paced emergency room or a more relaxed family medicine office. You can work in a school, a nursing home, or with a home health care program.

Proceed in mind that y'all may need to go on to take courses and accelerate your didactics to keep your license current.

If you choose to advance your career, yous tin can go an advanced practice registered nurse (APRN). This usually requires getting a principal's degree in nursing. There are 4 types of APRNs:

Certified nurse midwives
Certified nurse practitioners
Certified nurse specialists
Certified registered nurse anesthetists

Get Started with Coursera

If you lot're gear up to explore one of the nigh in-demand and exciting career paths, become started with nursing instruction courses from some of the top universities in the earth. Options include Vital Signs: Understanding What the Trunk Is Telling United states from the University of Pennsylvania or Medical Emergencies: Airway, Animate, and Circulation from the University of Colorado.

If you're already a registered nurse, build upon your current education by taking courses that comprehend some of the latest topics that have impacted the medical field, like COVID-19 Contact Tracing For Nursing Professionals from the University of Houston or the Nursing Informatics Leadership Specialization from the University of Minnesota.

Your Guide to Nursing Degrees and Certifications
What Is a Medical Technologist (and How Practise I Become One)?
What Is a Medical Laboratory Technician?
What Is Health Care Administration? What You Need to Know

Article sources

1. US Bureau of Labor Statistics. "Registered Nurses Have Highest Employment in Healthcare Occupations; Anesthesiologists Earn the Most, https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2015/registered-nurses-have-highest-employment-in-healthcare-occupations-anesthesiologists-earn-the-virtually.htm." Accessed Dec 7, 2021.

2. ANA. "The Nursing Process, https://www.nursingworld.org/do-policy/workforce/what-is-nursing/the-nursing-process/." Accessed Dec 7, 2021.

3. Us Bureau of Labor Statistics. "Registered Nurses, https://www.bls.gov/ooh/healthcare/registered-nurses.htm." Accessed Apr 22, 2022.

4. National Cancer Found Dictionary of Cancer terms. "Ostomy, https://www.cancer.gov/publications/dictionaries/cancer-terms/def/ostomy." Accessed December 7, 2021.

Written by Coursera • Updated on May three, 2022

This content has been made available for advisory purposes only. Learners are advised to carry boosted research to ensure that courses and other credentials pursued run across their personal, professional, and fiscal goals.