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Registered nurses, which comprise the largest body of staff at any hospital, play a vital role in hospitals or care-giving institutions. They take care of many of the day-to-day tasks of patient care, as well as give important assistance to doctors and physicians.
Registered nurses provide care for sick patients, as well as for those who are injured or disabled, and they also act as a vital communications link between patients, families and physicians. One of the main roles of a registered nurse is to assist doctors and physicians with their patients' needs, record care procedures and symptoms, and help establish patient care diagnosis to help the sick return to health.
Many nurses start out as registered nurses before advancing their careers with additional post-secondary education and on-the-job training. Nursing specialties include working in the operating room, maternity wards, with the elderly or with children, and in the emergency room. The field has dozens of different career options, but advancement requires additional training and education, such as earning a master's degree in nursing or gaining certification.
Skills or character traits that serve registered nurses well are compassion and the desire to help sick or injured people. Nurses also should be sympathetic, responsible, and pay great attention to detail. They also need to be able to cope with extremely stressful working conditions. Some states limit the scope of a registered nurses' duties, while other stats allow registered nurses to work with much more authority over care procedures.
Working Conditions for Registered Nurses: What to Expect After Completing Nursing School
The overwhelming majority of registered nurses--1,492,000 of the more than 2.5 million registered nurses employed in the U.S. in 2009--work in hospitals or general surgical clinics, reports the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Others find work in physicians offices, nursing facilities, or in home health care.
Most registered nurses work as part of a nursing team. From 2008 through 2018, the Bureau of Labor statistics (BLS) estimates that there should be 581,500 new nurses coming into the field. Many new registered nurses replace older workers who retire, while many more replace nurses who leave the field for different professions. Working with the sick and injured can take a heavy emotional toll on nurses, and many choose to find different jobs without as much pressure. But the reasons why some registered nurses choose to leave the field are the same reasons why some love the profession--working with sick and disabled people and helping them get well.
Other nurses tire of working long shifts, nights and weekends. The upside, though, is longer periods of time off. Registered nurses benefit from good starting salaries for entry-level nursing jobs, and job security due to high demand for their services.
Salary Information for Registered Nurses
The median salary for nurses in 2009 was $63,750, while the top 10 percent of registered nurses earned $93,700 annually, the BLS reports. Even those in the lowest 10th percentile still earned $43,970 per year. The annual wage of nurses working in hospital settings was $67,740. Registered nurses who worked for medical equipment and supply manufacturing companies had salaries of $77,870 per year.
Nurses in California earned far more per year than the national mean wage--$85,080 per year, followed by Massachusetts ($81,780), Hawaii ($80,020) and Maryland ($76,330). The top five best-paying metropolitan areas in the country all were in California, headed by Visalia-Porterville ($111,030 per year on average) and San Jose, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara ($110,080).
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