Exploring Nursing: A Respectable and Rewarding Career

Nursing is one of the best career options
Sean Murphy
Maine College of Health Professions

Nurses are the ones who will care for and help guide families though the toughest moments in their lives. To be a nurse is more than just a job. You must be able to care for the sick, communicate with the grieving patients and families. Only the strongest will join the ranks of the registered nurses. To be a nurse proves your dedication, work ethic and ability to show compassion and empathy. Nursing is a highly respected career choice. As the Marines say of their own ranks “only the few and the proud” will make it as a registered nurse. Registered nurses will go through lifelong learning on top of earing a minimum of an associate’s degree

After earning your RN you will be able to find a job quickly and in many different settings. Some of these options include working within a hospital system, or at a long term care facility, a travel nursing, sick clinics, or even in schools. . Now the part you are really wondering about how much does a nurse make? Great question. As a nurse your earing potential is extremely high. The median annual wage for registered nurses was $68,450 in May 2016. The median wage is the wage at which half the workers in an occupation earned more than that amount and half earned less. The lowest 10 percent earned less than $47,120, and the highest 10 percent earned more than $102,990. (https://www.bls.gov/ooh/healthcare/registered-nurses.htm#tab-5) Depending on where you work and what you are doing will determine the exact amount but you can expect for a full time position to be earning a great pay check. Nursing also can present you the ability to have a flexible work schedule due to the fact that patients will need care 24/7. You can choose the option finding a job working 8 or 12-hour shifts or you can choose to set your own type of schedule working per diem

As a patient advocate, a RN will help to make sure the patient makes the right choice if possible and if they cannot then they uphold a strict guidelines of rules. Often times your patients may not understand the procedures or diagnosis. Nurses will work with integrity of the highest levels to help the patients understand what is going on and what it all means to them. You as the RN will be able to use your highly developed communication skills to both communicate and educate patients and their demanding families. As we discussed there are many reasons to become a nurse in the future. Becoming a RN will provide you with a stable well-paying job that is always in high demand. You will at times be the only person that will be there for the patient and at times have to deliver some very tough new. Nursing will test who you are as a person and provide you with a highly rewarding career. Nursing as a career will provide many options and much flexibility.