A nurse practitioner is a separate career path than simple nursing jobs, or nursing assistant jobs. As a nurse practitioner, your work would be focused on offering the most help possible to your patients, whether you became employed at a small clinic, or a larger hospital. A nurse practitioner gives general medical assistance to patients, under the direction of a qualified physician. You would perform examinations and give medical advice to patients, again under the direction of a physician. Not only would you examine patients, you would also be the one to make the appropriate tests to discern what ails your patient, and then you would be there to offer advice, and prescribe proper medications. You would be able to set up a recovery plan with patients, and help them set worthy health goals. As a nurse practitioner, you would serve in more of a doctoral capacity then the average nurse, and you would be able to be with your patient nearly every step of the way on their road to recovering better health.
While there are many nursing positions to choose from, becoming a nurse practitioner stands out. Perhaps that is because of the unique things a nurse practitioner gets the opportunity to do. So many positions in the medical field are so specific—radiology, for instance. If you decide to become a radiologist, you work in the radiology aspect of health care. The anesthetic department works only with anesthetic. But a nurse practitioner gets to do so many different things, because a nurse practitioner works in a wider field—a more general range. That is only one of the many benefits this particular job offers. A nurse practitioner has so many duties—it would be impossible to become bored. No day is monotonous in this field.
To outline all of the other things a nurse practitioner does on a daily basis would take a considerable amount of time. But some of the reportedly best aspect of this particular career is the fact that a nurse practitioner gets to work with all ages. They help adults regulate blood pressure, and control chronic illnesses, such as diabetes. But they also help keep children immunized, and physically check and monitor a child’s development. And that’s not all. A nurse practitioner also gets involved with testing and research—X-rays, lab tests. They order these different tests, help accomplish them, and then they even interpret them. As you can see, a nurse practitioner becomes very, very involved.
Any career in the medical world is substantially more stable than almost any other job. The job security the medical field assures comes from the simple fact that medical aid has always been sought after, and it will remain that way. Healthcare has been needed in the past, and will always be needed in the future. While the world of technology turns and advances, many specific jobs have become unnecessary. Many people chose to make the now obsolete VCR their prime career. They learned all about it; learned how to build them and repair them, but what good does that knowledge do them now? Healthcare jobs will always be necessary, no matter what advances the world chooses to make.
To become a nurse practitioner, you must first become a registered nurse (RN) and then complete advanced education (a masters degree at least, is required) training in the diagnosis and management of common medical conditions. A nurse practitioner makes generally above $80,000 yearly, depending on where you decide to make your workplace. (Nursing Homes, College Clinics, and specialized Nurse Practitioner Offices—these are other employment choices, besides the regular hospital setting.)
The main philosophy of the nurse practitioner is the importance of the individual. A nurse practitioner works more intimately with patients than even the average doctor. If you care about helping the individual person, becoming a nurse practitioner will be a very rewarding career for you. A nurse practitioner takes a more personal approach to medical healing—since they function almost on the same level as a physician, they have more of an opportunity to get further involved in the patient’s life and problems than a regular nurse would be able. A nurse practitioner also strives to be sure that they not only locate the illness a patient faces, but they also make sure that the patient understands. A nurse practitioner is all about the individual.
