4 More Rewarding Career Specializations for Registered Nurses

Completing a degree in any field often feels like the end of the line. The only way to move forward is to gain more experience and go into management, or start your own business … but essentially doing the same things day-to-day that you did straight out of university. Being aregistered nurse is completely different - humans are immensely complex organisms, and there are many specialisations of nurses created to cope with health problems at different stages of life, with different organs, and in differing degrees of severity. Today we continue our look at career specialisation for registered nurses - there are some exciting ones!

1. Neonatal nursing

Neonatal nursing is separate to midwifery or labor and delivery nursing, which is focused more on the care of the mother … as you can imagine there are very different problems that would be encountered by each party to a birth. Nowadays neonatal nursing is mostly focused on babies that have health issues - healthy babies and mothers usually have very short hospital stays and usually sleep in the same room.

2. Nephrology nursing

Nephrology nursing involves caring for patients with kidney disease … a pair of little organs can create some major problems for the body if they malfunction! Nephrology nurses don't only supervise dialysis, they would also assist in perioperative patient care for kidney transplants, or work in research, administration, management, or coordination.

3. Nurse educator

Nursing as a discipline has always involved education since the early 1900s, where the causes of illness began to be better understood and it was recognized that prevention was better than cure. Now, however, nurse educators mostly work in training new nurses, rather than educating the general public. They may work in hospitals and general health care, or in universities.

4. Nurse executives

This is a critical specialisation within registered nursing, and relates to coordinating networks of nursing and care, partnering with consumers and the general public, being accountable for the results of a particular department or facility, and collaborating with other health care professionals.

Rewarding Career Specializations for Registered Nurses

Unlike many careers, becoming a registered nurse is not necessarily the end of the career line. A single degree is never all the learning that is available to a nurse in today's health landscape, where it is increasingly being recognized that full medical training is not needed in every health situation, and in many cases, a nurse can provide effective care to patients on their own. Additionally, nursing knowledge can also lead to far-flung and fascinating specialities, like legal nurse consulting. Today we take a look at all the amazing career options available to registered nurses!

1. Critical care nurse

A licensed professional nurse who deals with critically ill patients, and also with their families, is known as a critical care nurse. These patients often have very complex problems, and are on the border between life and death. Specialisations within the field of critical care nursing include neonatal, pediatric and adult critical care.

2. Emergency nurses

Emergency nurses work in the Accident and Emergency Departments of a hospital, and must be able to work effectively in situations where instantaneous decisions are required, and a high level of calm, compassion and caring is required. While patient care is by far the largest specialisation within this career for registered nurses, some emergency nurses also work as educators with the general public, helping to prevent accidents, and some work in leadership and research, helping to create programs for provision of emergency care.

3. Palliative care nursing

Nurses who care for terminally ill patients are known as palliative care nurses, and they usually work within a patient's home rather than in a hospital. The largest day-to-day roles of a palliative care nurse are management of pain and symptoms, support for the family, and availability 24 hours a day. Some may specialise in oncology, pediatrics, or geriatrics.

4. Labor and delivery nursing

After becoming a registered nurse, many women choose to specialise in labor and delivery, which used to be known as midwifery. These nurses care for women with complicated pregnancies, or who are labouring or have recently delivered. The care of the babies is often more of a separate specialisation, but with normal uncomplicated deliveries, the work is very interlinked.