Trusted Guide to Nursing Specialties
When you commit to the nursing profession, you’re not just committing yourself to caring for others, you’re committing yourself to doing so within a specific area of nursing. Just like you chose to study nursing in school instead of the many other options out there, you must also choose what kind of nurse you want to be.
This decision isn’t necessarily an easy one, but it’s also not an irreversible decision either. In the same way you can change your college major, you can similarly change your nursing specialty. That said, when deciding on an initial specialty, you need to think carefully about it.
There is a lot that goes into choosing a nursing specialty: education requirements, career advancement, responsibilities, salary, work setting, patient population, and even the most common diagnoses you’ll see on a daily basis.
There Is a Lot That Goes Into
Choosing a Nursing Specialty
With so much to consider (like types of nurses from Critical Care Nurse to Informatics Nurse to Nurse Educator and more), where do you begin? Let’s start with the what.
Put simply, nursing specialties represent specific areas of nursing expertise. As you know by now the human body, how it works, and all the external factors that affect it are complex. Despite all you’ll learn in nursing school and must know for the NCLEX, everything about every area of healthcare and in professional practice is simply too large a task for anyone.
Accordingly, just as in medicine there are different specialties that doctors will commit to, so too must nurses choose an area to specialize in. Nursing specialties can vary by patient age or demographic, type of care given, location of care given, and numerous other factors.
Some nurses even choose to work as travel nurses, gaining a variety of experience across these factors within a specialty (here is some data we collected on choosing a travel nurse specialty).
Some common specialties you’ve definitely heard of? Intensive Care Unit Nurse (ICU) or Emergency Department Nurse (ED/ER). These specialties are typically held by Registered Nurses or RNs, while some other common specialties are actually held by Advanced Practice Nurse Practitioners; for example, Family Nurse Practitioner, Pediatric Nurse Practitioner, or Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner.
Short answer? Licensed Practical Nurses/Licensed Vocational Nurses (LPN/LVNs), Registered Nurses (RNs), Advanced Practice Registered Nurses (APRNs), and Doctors of Nursing Practice (DNPs)… really all nurses! As mentioned above, nurses work in all areas of healthcare, and the types of specialties available to you differ based upon your nursing school experience and education level. While there are dozens of nursing specialties that begin with RN requirements, there are plenty of others that require advanced degrees, either Masters Degrees in Nursing or even Doctorate Degrees in Nursing (DNPs or PhDs).
Accordingly, there are additional nurse practitioner specialties that are only available to nurses who’ve achieved a certain level of education.
We all know that education can be expensive, not to mention it can take away significant time from work. So, why commit to choosing a specialty, particularly one that requires further education? There are many reasons.
A big factor here is that in order to get a job you have to go work within a certain specialty or specialty group. Another is to align your professional work and what you do with what you’re most interested in and passionate about!
However, if your driver is not to pursue a particular medical interest (mental health, for example), it might be to support a specific demographic (which can greatly affect the type of patient care you give); if it’s not that, it might be to have more job opportunities (more specialized roles are often in higher demand) or even receive a higher salary.
There are plenty of reasons to pursue a specialty, but your reason (or reasons) will be just that, your own reasoning for choosing what path you want to follow. No one can answer that question for you, it simply takes time and a lot of thought.
Here’s What You Should Focus On:
In the following resources, we’ll take a look at numerous specialty resources to help you decide which one is the best fit for you. We’ll cover in depth the various components of nursing specialties to keep in mind as you browse your options.
What
Do the patient population, care setting, delivery model, and diagnoses found within this specialty interest you, is it something you want to learn more about?
Education Requirements
Do you have the educational requirement necessary to work in a given role within this specialty? If not, are they attainable for you, and would you be interested in pursuing them?
Care Advancement
Is there a clear career pathway within the specialty? Do you have interest in pursuing additional certifications and experience within this specialty? Does the experience align with your career goals?
Certifications
Do you have the certifications required for this specialty? Are you committed to completing them and keeping them up to date?
Salary
Does the salary feel fair for the work? Will the salary support your lifestyle or cost of living? Family needs, etc?
Specialty Responsibilities
Are you interested in the procedures, types of patient interactions, makeup of the interdisciplinary team you’d be a part of, and the tools and technologies you’d be using (or lack thereof)?
Common Diagnoses
Are you interested in seeing, discussing with, and treating patients with the most common diagnoses in this specialty?
Care Setting
Where you’re working can be just as important as what you’re doing!Do you think you would thrive in a fast-paced setting seeing a multitude of patients in a day, like the ER? Or would you rather build relationships with the same patients in the inpatient setting?