Competencies that are well known to the nursing profession, such as care management and coordination, patient education, public health intervention, and transitional care, are likely to dominate in a reformed health care system. As Edward O’Neil, Director, Center for the Health Professions at the University of California, San Francisco, pointed out however, “these traditional competencies must be reinterpreted for students into the settings of the emergent care system, not the one that is being left behind. This will require faculty to not only teach to these competencies but also creatively apply them to health environments that are only now emerging” (O’Neil, 2009). Emerging new competencies in decision making, quality improvement, systems thinking, and team leadership must become part of every nurse’s professional formation from the prelicensure through the doctoral level.

Nurse Anesthetist. A nurse anesthetist assist mainly with medical procesdures, specifically with anesthetic. To become a nurse anesthetist, you must hold bachelor's degree. This table shows a list of occupations with job duties that are similar to those of registered nurses. Many universities offer degrees in nursing. You can find a list of courses by using our Course Finder.

Since nursing is such a highly sought after profession that requires advanced training, education is key to your successful journey to becoming a nurse. Many employers now prefer that nurses have a Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) over an Associates Degree in Nursing (ASN) or RN. Nurses with a Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) develop the breadth of knowledge and clinical experience needed to succeed in today’s complex health care system. Note: None of these occupations typically require work experience in a related occupation for entry or on-the-job training for competency.

Simply put, nurses are life-savers. There are more than 3 million registered nurses in the United States. In fact, nurses outnumber doctors 3:1 in the health care industry. While doctors often specialize in one area, nurses are able to coordinate the care for all aspects of a patient’s overall health. A patient experiencing chest pains, for example, might have a cardiologist, a nephrologist and an internal medicine specialist. Each of these doctors would diagnose, treat and prescribe medications solely for their area of expertise. The nurse, though, would be the care provider responsible for the patient’s full care, ensuring prescriptions don’t negatively interact with one another, and that a patient understands and is prepared for treatment. When diagnostic results come in, it’s the nurse who reads them first and, if necessary, immediately notifies the appropriate doctor.Emotional stability. Registered nurses need emotional resilience and the ability to cope with human suffering, emergencies, and other stressors. Diagnostic medical sonographers and cardiovascular technologists and technicians operate special equipment to create images or to conduct tests. RNs who work in certain specialties may become certified through the professional association for the specialty. This is usually not required, but it does convey a certain level of mastery and competence, and some employers prefer it.

To change nursing education meaningfully so as to produce nurses who are prepared to meet the above challenges in the decade ahead will require changes in four areas: what is taught, how it is taught, who the students are, and who teaches them. This chapter opens with a description of the nursing education system and the need for integrating equity into education, and then examines each of these four areas in turn:England, Canada, and the United States have made strides to improve interprofessional education by bringing students together from academic health science universities and medical centers (e.g., students of nursing, medicine, pharmacy, social work, physical therapy, and public health, among others) in shared learning environments (Tilden, 2010). Defined as “occasions when two or more professions learn with, from, and about each other to improve collaboration and the quality of care” (Barr et al., 2005), such education is based on the premise that students’ greater familiarity with each other’s roles, competencies, nomenclatures, and scopes of practice will result in more collaborative graduates. It is expected that graduates of programs with interprofessional education will be ready to work effectively in patient-centered teams where miscommunication and undermining behaviors are minimized or eliminated, resulting in safer, more effective care and greater clinician and patient satisfaction. Interprofessional education is thought to foster collaboration in implementing policies and improving services, prepare students to solve problems that exceed the capacity of any one profession, improve future job satisfaction, create a more flexible workforce, modify negative attitudes and perceptions, and remedy failures of trust and communication (Barr, 2002). 19 Did you know nursing is the UK’s most employable type of degree, with 94% of students getting a job within six months of finishing their course? If you don’t have a degree but are working in a healthcare-related role (or would like to), you could take a nursing degree apprenticeship. These are similar to nursing degrees in that they involve a mix of academic study and placements, but they’re employer-led rather than being led by universities. Alongside working in a paid healthcare role, you study part time (and your employer will release you from work to enable you to do this) and complete a series of placements.