Do you consider nursing a profession or occupation?

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Hi! I was interested on how nurses perceive their job. Would you consider nursing a profession or occupation? and What is the best part of your job? :)

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Specializes in Nursing Professional Development.

How do you define profession?

Can something be both a profession and an occupation? -- or are they mutually exclusive?

And do you mean all levels of nursing ... or just at the RN level?

This is what you must clarify to answer your question. If this is a homework assignment, I suggest you start there. If not, I suggest you clarify your terms for us so as to avoid confusion and misunderstanding as we each may use terms a little differently.

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J. O. B.

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Specializes in Med/Surg/ICU/Stepdown.

I suppose it depends on the respective definitions of 'profession' and 'occupation', as they are terms that are clearly defined, and in comparison to nursing's educational requirements and job requirements, it would be easy to categorize.

It does sound like a HW question. I'm all for helping, but do me a favor, and do the background research first.

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Specializes in Critical care.

I count it as a profession. We are required to have licenses and there are certain requirements to keep our licenses. We have to take a national exam and we are required a certain number of continuing education hours in order to maintain our licenses. We also have professional and national organizations such as the ANA. There are so many opportunities within our profession and so many ways to advance ourselves career wise. I absolutely think nursing is a profession.

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Specializes in Surgery.

It's both. I'm a professional nurse!

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