looking for advice on Nurse Practitioner career

nikki109 · Mar 22, 2009

TWilson, I am also very interested in this! I do not hold my RN at the moment, I will be going to Nursing school this fall (I hope!!).. but I am too interested in pursuing the NP career track.

If anyone can help us out, that would be great!!

Advanced Practice Columnist / Guide · Mar 22, 2009

There are numerous reasons why nurses pursue the NP route and while there is a variety of NP roles out there, the common theme for all of us is the ability to diagnose, treat, or prescribe as you mentioned. As a nurse practitioner, I do get a lot of job satisfaction in being able to do advanced skills and practicing with a certain degree of autonomy than when I only had a license as a Registered Nurse. On the other hand, there are many nurses who are quite content with their current non-advanced practice role. I think it is definitely worth it for you to spend a few years in a non-advanced practice nurse role such as a staff nurse position in a hospital setting to allow you to figure out exactly what part of nursing you like the most. That will help make your decision easier in regards to what kind of nurse practitioner you want to be.

If you don't already know, there many NP tracks or specializations to choose from and each has a particular focus on an age group and/or acuity of patients. By this, I am referring to either FNP, ANP, ACNP, PNP, WHNP etc. as each one has an intended purpose of training depending on your career goals. Another consideration for you is to find out how employment trends affect the NP's in the locality where you live. There are definitely certain areas where the NP supply pool far outweighs the local health care institutions' needs for NP's. There are also areas where certain types of NP's tend to find jobs much easier than other types.

A final consideration is where to attend school. Some universities and colleges have diverse NP track openings while some have very limited tracks. Cost is definitely a factor to consider. NP programs are offered in institutions varying from the very expensive Ivy League universities to the affordable public universities in your home state. Some programs are offered in traditional classrooms and some are offered via online format. The common theme for all programs is that clinicals are face to face with a preceptor while caring for real human patients and a minumum amount of hours of completion is required. This definitely will affect your ability to work at the same time you're in school depending on the pace in which you wish to graduate.

Good luck in your future plans and do visit the nurse practitioner forum as there surely is a wealth of information there for you, as well as others, interested in our NP role.

tonet0908 · Mar 22, 2009

Hi TWilson, I've been an RN now for the last three and a half years and I went back for FNP because a lot of the older nurses that I work with encouraged me to go back before I get much older. So far, I have one course left and I finished just one out of 6 of the clinical courses. I have to say, I am learning to change my thinking of just following orders to actually having to figure things out myself and try to diagnose and treat myself and it is very stressful not having any NP experience. But like everything else, practice makes perfect so I'm sure it will get easier.

I'm not doing it for the money as well, I wanted to challenge myself and I think I would enjoy this field of nursing than working at the bedside and following orders and completing tasks. I think you should give it a try and see if it is the career path for you.

TWilsonRN · Apr 4, 2009

Thanks for the responses guys.