Responsibilities of a Nurse

Nurses are those people, without whom the doctors are left to the face of a medical destitute and patients and on the other hand, learn to put a smile on their faces even in their hard times. You can tag nurses with equivalent words such as, nurturers, providers or comforters. Their responsibilities are much more than just the financial gain. They are known to provide moral support to the patients, their families and the people who need mental backing during their peak times. Well it's also seen that, the duties and responsibilities of a nurse have different set of parameters. They are categorized into fields like, Registered Nurses (RNs), Nurse practitioners, Licensed Practical Nurses (LPNs), Certified Nursing Assistant (CNAs), Head nurses or nurse supervisors, home health nurses, nursing home nurses and nursing aides. Now, having so many different types of nursing careers, the skills and abilities of a nurse must postulate every level of interaction with different patients and ingest a cultured professionalism in them.

Duties of a Nurse

• The role of becoming a nurse is as good as a teacher or a mother. They provide direct comfort and care to the patients mental state of mind and also during the diagnostic procedures.
• Sound knowledge towards work and a proper sense to approach the clients will explain the responsibilities of a registered nurse very well. He/She should be highly trained and qualified to handle the well-being of the patients.
• Times would come when, emotional and mental support would be required to patient's families in respect to patient's condition. Listening and communication skills to talk the problems out with the family and understand their needs makes one a very good nurse.
• Responsibilities can be like doing regular checkups, monitoring patient's health, and drafting reports and statistics to patient's conditions. A minor change in patient's health should not go unnoticed. This all sounds quite an on-the-toes type of a job but it surely is valuable.
• Coordination with physicians, doctors, clinicians and other nurse staff is vital. Showing efficiency and a good presence of mind even in the absence of the surgeons or the doctors, indeed adds a lot of ranks to this post.
• To educate and help the patients to perform different exercise programs which are good for their health, and help them to construct a regimen diet.
• Apart from all the above, the most important factor is, the flexibility about the working hours. This is an extremely stressful and a time demanding job to take up. It's like medical emergencies come uninvited, hence there is no specific time to work. They can be needed for assistance even at the 11th hour. Also, overnight shifts, skipping weekends and extensive shift timings are all the requisites of becoming a nurse and handling all these responsibilities dutifully.

So now, learning through all the qualities of a good nurse and understanding what exactly this job demands, if you aspire to admit yourself to this profession, it will be a blessed thing you would do for the community and for the people. Besides the field of nursing, let's come across some career options for these blessed souls.

List of Alternative Nursing Careers

Here I have mentioned some alternative careers for nurses belonging to different fields, where they can implement for in lieu of the conventional nursing practice in scientific and clinical aspects.

• Medical Transcription: Basically, the work of medical transcription is to transcribe an audio recording of clinical and medical data into the database of a computer for an electronic storage. Nurses and paramedical professionals who have sound knowledge about medicines, clinical cases, certain drug names and terms, etc. can excel in this field.
• School Nurse: An excellent career for those who love to be around kids and teenagers and have no problem in doing this hectic job. As the patients are young and need special care, it is a very different type of work compared to other nursing options. A nurse with never-ending patience, a quick smile and a friendly behavior can make the stay hours of the kids at the hospital less traumatic. This is one of the advantages of handling the responsibilities of a pediatric nurse, where no two days are ever the same.
• Clinical Data Manager: It is basically a clinical research post for the ones who have a degree in IT or computer science. Perhaps, a Registered Nurse who has an average to broad background in computer operations could be suitable to take this post. The work is to gather clinical data, create Case Report Forms (CRFs)- either electronic or paper, clarify issues to avail the analysis, etc.
• Company Nurse: Although this job overall has a clinical background, but a nurse doesn't have to completely deal in taking care of the critical patients. General duties like, providing first aid-treatments to people with minor injuries, subscribing over-the-counter drugs for relieving minor illness, approaching patients that are needed in hospitals to hospital cares is the basic idea of this job. Gaining a Master's Degree in Nursing (MSN or MS) from a reputed nursing school and getting trained in caring for infants, children, etc., states the duties of a nurse practitioner. This job is mostly administrative in nature and pediatrics can family practice their clinical know-how as well.
• Medical Writer: A medical writer's job entails Case Study Reports (CSR) as well as writing study protocols. In this job, nurses holding technical writing skills prove to be a good fit to pursue this career. Although it's obvious that the job of a medical writer is usually occupied by professional writers and is facilitated under the guidance of bio-statistics branch and medical study monitors, but in modern times, nurses aren't confined strictly within the white walls of a hospital.

A nurse gains a lot of experience and is known to stitch herself not only to terms of medicine but also to the terms of humanity.