Research Paper: Career as a Nurse Notecards

Facts About Nursing Page 3 From the Nursing Program: -Nursing is the largest healthcare profession. -There are more than 3.1 million nurses nationwide. -Registered Nurses are make up the largest part of the U.S. workforce and get paid the highest. -For the U.S. to meet the complex demands of the environment of healthcare today, The National Advisory Council on Nurse Education and Practice, has recommended that at least 2/3 of the workforce of nurses hold a baccalaureate or higher degrees. ----------------------------------------------------------- Facts on Page 312 From the Book of Majors: -The ratio of registered nurses to physicians is 4:1. ----------------------------------------------------------- Facts Page 196 From Careers in Focus: -Approximately 60% of all nursing jobs are found in hospitals. -About 21% of Registered Nurses work part time.

Thesis Statement Have you ever thought of becoming a nurse when you get older? There are so many things that you need to know before you make your decision on what you want to be when you leave high school. Becoming a nurse can be hard at times when you have to deal with patients' dying that you had to take care of. It also can be hard for you physically because you work a lot of shifts and have to walk on your feet all day or night. Nursing can be hard for you academically too because after you finish nursing school then you are required to take an exam. You have to take the exam to get your nursing licenses so you can then get a job. Also your high school GPA has to be really good to be selected into the nursing program.

Education Page 312 From the Book of Majors: -Courses that are required: 4 years of English, 4 years of math (including pre-calculus, statistics, and calculus), 3 years of science (including biology, physics, and chemistry), 3 years of social studies, and 3 years of a foreign language. -Courses that are recommended: Health and nutrition, growth development, speech, writing, computer applications, and psychology. Education Page 313: -Make sure to prepare for the National Council Licensing Examination for Registered Nurses at least several hours each day to remember stuff and not cram the night before. ----------------------------------------------------------- Education Page 253 From McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology: -Most common routes of education degrees: Associate Degree: 2 years, Hospital-Based Diploma Schools: (3 years), Baccalaureate Degree: (4 years) -Baccalaureate Degree is the top professional degree that allows you to have a greater flexibility and advancements of job opportunities. -After completing your nursing program then you are required to take the National Council Licensing Examination for Registered Nurses and pass it to be able to get your licenses before you are accepted as a professional registered nurse. --------------------------------------------------------- Education Page 192 From Careers in Focus: -Baccalaureate Degree: required for more administrative position like jobs in a public health place or admission to graduate from a nursing program. -Master's Degree: required to prepare for a nursing specialty or to teach it. Education Page 193: -Associate Degree: awarded after taking 2 years of a nursing program offered in either a junior or community college. -Diploma Program: lasts for about 3 years and is put on by hospitals or independent schools but numbers of people taking this program is declining. -Postgraduate training: allows people to specialize in a different areas of nursing and can be offered by hospitals or an on-the-job training. ----------------------------------------------------------- Career Information Page 619 From the The World Book Encyclopedia: -As a high school try talking to your school guidance counselor, the school nurse, or even actual nurses from hospitals about information on going forward with the career after high school. -Some high schools have \"future nurses\" clubs where you visit hospitals, schools of nursing, volunteer work, or even serve as a nurse's aid.

Planning a Nursing Career Page 616 From the World Book Encyclopedia: -Must be active on your feet from walking all over the hospital on your shifts. -Need to be able to do strenuous work like lifting patients. -Must like people to do this job. ---------------------------------------------------------- Overview Page 187 From Careers in Focus: -The job consists of helping families, individuals, and groups to accomplish health issues and prevent diseases. -Be able to care for sick and injured people in hospitals or other healthcare facilities. ----------------------------------------------------------- The Job Page 188 From Careers in Focus: -There are many different types of just registered nurses but here are a few of them from the list. -General Duty Nurses: complete duties of patients' needs like taking vitals, giving them medicine or injections, recording symptoms, prepares patient's for their surgeries, and helps them with their personal care. -Surgical Nurses: they make sure the operating room is ready and that the surgical instruments are clean, and help pass the surgical instruments to the surgeons. -Scrub Nurses: they choose the surgical instruments and supplies that will be needed for that particular surgery. -Post Anesthesia Care Unit Nurses: they check on the patients' pain levels and vitals after they wake up in the recovery room from their surgery. Page 189: -Critical Care Nurses: they take care of the critically ill patients that need intensive care. -Maternity/Neonatal Nurses: they help the doctors in the delivery rooms, care for the newborns, and teach new mothers how to feed and care for their newborns. -Private Duty Nurses: they work in either hospitals or patients' houses and are employed by the patients or their family to take care of them. Page 191: -Hospice Nurses: they take care of patients that are in their final stages of a terminal illness at their house and the nurse might have to give medical and emotional support to the patient, their family, and friends. Work Environment Page 195: -Nurses need to be careful with cleanliness and sterility when caring with patients with infectious diseases. -Nursing duties are a routine that require a ton of responsibilities. -Sick people can be demanding so make sure that you control your mood and achieve the patients' by helping them feel better. -You will be standing and walking a lot so make you are capable of both of those.

-The Most Important Skill: patience -Emotional Skills: to be caring, don't judge and have strong ability to emphasize. (like don't judge people that are disabled/physical issues/mental issues/emotional issues) -Intellectual Skills: to be intelligent, organized, a multitasker, know how to use math like standard and metric measurements for the different machines, and to have background information on science. -Communication Skills: to have good listening skills and to be able to speak a foreign language like Spanish. -Observational Skills: to be able to notice stuff that is not right on a patient's body or just how they are behaving. -Physical Skills-to be able to do physical activity like lifiting, restraining, moving, adjusting, or just walking.

Technology Page 53 From Your Career in Nursing: -Data Collection: info that is entered into a computer, laptop, or handheld device to keep track of a patients allergies and history of medications. -Data Storage: data that is stored or transferred to different applications. -Patient Care: allows nurses to gather the patient's laboratory results, histories of medications, their care plans, and vital information. -Data Communication and Sharing Between Systems: makes sure that only certain kinds of information is shared and that it protects the information to ensure safety and confidentiality of the data stored. Also it is programmed so that you can send data that is stored in one system to another one as needed. -Data Mining and Research: used to generate reports that are necessary by regulatory agencies, insurance companies, and other related healthcare services to get the report back faster than the paper systems do. -Patient Education and Staff Development: used for nurses to log on at work or home to prepare education materials for patients and the nurses can also approve sites that are sponsored by nursing organizations or through online journals. -Quality Monitoring and Improvement: allows changes of stored data of patient care to happen quicker. -Technology has changed the glass mercury thermometers to digital ones. Page 55: -Technology has changed the procedures of cardiac catheterization and lots more. -Sonograms improved the whole view of the interior body spaces. -The development of computed scans, magnetic resonance, and positron emission tomography scans have made information and diagnoses that are prescribed much faster. -Laser and laparoscopic surgery has replaced older surgical procedures that allow patients to recover much faster.

Earnings Page 195 From Careers in Focus: -Salaries of Registered Nurses range from $43,970-$93,700. -Their salary is depended on the setting, education, and work experience of their job. -According to the U.S. Department of Labor, in 2009 Registered Nurses had a median annual earnings of $63,750. Work Environment Page 195 From Careers in Focus: -Registered nurses work about 8 hours on just one shift. -There are 3 shifts they can choose either the 7:00 A.M.-3:00 P.M., 3:00 P.M.-11:00 P.M., or 11:00 P.M.-7:00 A.M. ----------------------------------------------------------- Planning a Nursing Career Page 616 From The World Book Encyclopedia: -Registered nurses salaries' are often high compared to other professions in the world.

Nurse Shortage Page 313 From The Book of Majors: -The slow economic recovery is making it hard for Registered nurses that just graduated to find jobs. -Slow economic recovery is also causing he retirement of nurses that are older. -Possibly by the year 2020, there will be a huge shortage of more than 800,000 Registered nurses in the number of nurses needed in healthcare system of the nation. ----------------------------------------------------------- Nursing Shortage Page 23 From Your Career in Nursing: -A nursing shortage is impacted by economics and financial issues in that the nation is having. It also impacts all healthcare settings and not just in hospitals. -When a nation experiences a recession which is a temporary economic decline that causes trade and industrial activity to decrease. -A shortage sometimes will cause employees to leave their job. -The nursing workforce is starting to age rather quickly and that issue is what will drive the shortage into this century. Page 24: -Nurse shortages puts the care of patients at risks because of the short staff they have. This issue could even undergo the whole American healthcare industry. Page 39: -Due to the nursing shortage in 2007 about 40,000 qualified people from baccalaureate degrees and nursing programs were turned down. The reason why is because there was not enough faculty, clinical rooms, or classroom space. ----------------------------------------------------------- Nursing Shortage Page 196 From Careers in Focus: -The serious shortage of nurses has happen before in recent years. -Nurses continue to leave because due to high stress at work, the severe of under staffing, unsatisfactory working conditions, irregular shift hours, and other reasons too.

History of Nursing Page 619 From The World Book Encyclopedia: -The darkest period of the history of nursing was during the 1600s-1850s. -Nurses that worked in the charity hospitals were ones that were untrustworthy and were not trained. -People then did not know that cleanliness was an important thing in hospitals and how diseases would spread so quickly from one person to the next. -Nurses back then would sometimes end up getting diseases from the sick patients when taking care of them. -The wealthy people would not go to hospitals. Probably because they thought they were too good for it. -In the 1850s, an English nurse named Florence Nightingale, was the founder of modern professional nursing. -She was developed the first school of nursing in London during the 1860s and called it The Nightingale Training School for Nurses. -Then students that went to her school and graduated then traveled to different parts of the world teaching about nursing to other people. -New Haven (Connecticut) Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, and the Bellevue Hospital in New York City were the 1st nursing schools in the U.S. that were developed during 1873. -The American Nurses Association, Inc. of Registered nurses was organized in 1896. -Clara Barton, Edith Cavell, Elizabeth Kenny, and Lillian D. Wald were nurses that won world fame back then.

Outlook on Nursing Page 196 From the Careers in Focus: -The strong growth of the nursing fields has required the improvement of medical technology to allow more treatments of diseases and health issues. ----------------------------------------------------------- Future of Nursing Page 33 From Your Career in Nursing: -Our nation has been struggling for decades to develop a healthcare industry that is actually workable. The healthcare industry includes services that are reasonable, have quality, and are safe. -The ANA's Health System Reform Agenda are going to create a new healthcare system that will respond to the needs of patients and provides the services that are reasonable, have quality, and are safe. -In the new healthcare system that the ANA's Health System Reform Agenda is going to create will include: standard packaging of healthcare services for all citizens of the U.S. (Page 33), will reflect the Institute of Medicine's 6 Aims which are safe, effective, patient-centered, timely, efficient, and equitable (Page 33), redirect and reshape the healthcare system from the overuse of expensive technology equipment (Page 34), and then add the most considerate choice of the single-player mechanism that you can use to manage your money in the healthcare system (Page 34). Page 34: Nurses and the profession need to be involved in making the future of healthcare in the nation because it is important. The reason why is because the future of healthcare is naturally linked to the future of the nursing profession.

-I want to become a Registered Maternity/Neonatal Nurse because I love taking care of babies and they are just so adorable. -I know that babies can be needy all the time but I am a patient person with them. -At times it is hard to know what they want so you have to try different things to figure out what it is they want. -I had to take a class last year at my old school where we took care of a mechanical baby. It was a fun, tiring, and also an interesting experience for me. I found out quick that a baby is needy all throughout the day and night. There will be times that you will barely get any sleep because you need to care for them. I figured out then that I do not want a baby until I am older and married with a job. The reason why is because babies cost a lot of money and also trying to do school and taking care of a baby would be stressful. I also learned that some babies will have special cries for what they want. -Learning about the medical field is just fun and interesting to me. -I love helping people all the time because that is the type of person I am. -I am also in shape for a girl my age. -I am a compassionate, kind, caring, smart, and patient girl. -I am very sociable and remember things well. -I am a diligent and hardworking person. -I am confident and a dedicated person to my schoolwork or anything in general. -I am good at controlling my emotions when times are not well. -When I become a Registered Maternity/Neonatal Nurse I will be dedicated to my job and not let anything get in the way of it.