Nursing Certifications, Nursing Jobs and Nursing Exams

Help an Aging Population as a Gerontology Nurse

Ash — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 05:08:09 +0000

With the baby boomers now rapidly approaching retirement age and more and more people living longer, our aging population needs nurses who are trained to understand the complexities of their needs. A career as a gerontology nurse is therefore one that can be rewarding and fill an urgent need.

A Gerontology Clinical Nurse Specialist works with the elderly in a variety of settings that include nursing homes, hospitals, home health agencies, adult day health care facilities, long-term care facilities and skilled nursing facilities. These specialized nurses may work with patients directly providing the care needed for those who might not have any serious medical problems, but their ability to get around is limited so they require assistance with dressing, bathing and other necessities.

Many older people today continue to live in the homes they have maintained for years, yet they require assistance with these same services. Some gerontology nurse practitioners work independently or for agencies that provide in-home care for patients as well as the same services at other facilities. Ailments such as arthritis, diabetes or senility might have robbed the patient of the ability to help themselves so care is sometimes needed around the clock. Some gerontology nurses pursue more independent roles as case managers or positions in administration, education or research to assist with this large population that requires more and more help but wants to continue to live life to the fullest while they still can.

These gerontology nurses work collaboratively with physicians, health care professionals and other consultants to ensure that the elderly continue to get the best care possible. Their efforts continue with community agencies, skilled nursing facilities and long-term care institutions and they strive to make improvements in the quality of the care provided and make recommendations as situations arise.

Eligibility for the CHES

Ash — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 05:06:36 +0000

In the healthcare world, CHES stands for “Certified Health Education Specialist Exam. It’s an exam which serves as a tool that measures a person’s possession, interpretation and application of knowledge in seven specific areas that are required of health educators. Passing the exam means that the person has at least an entry-level competency in these seven areas.

The exam consists of 150 multiple choice questions. It’s done in standard pencil-and-paper form on college campuses throughout North America. Although currently there are 120 registered testing sites, any college campus that has a testing service may become a testing site.

The seven areas of responsibility that are tested on the CHES include:

Assessment of Individual / Community Needs for Health-Related Education
Planning Effective Education Strategies, Programs and Interventions
Implementation of Education Strategies, Programs and Interventions
Conducting Research and Evaluation Pertaining to Health Education
Administering Health Education Strategies, Programs and Interventions
Serving as a Health Education Liaison
Communicating and Advocating for Health Education

There are certain criteria which must be met before a person is eligible to take the CHES exam. All qualifications are based primarily on his or her academic qualifications.

Specifically, a Doctoral, Master’s or Bachelor’s Degree from an accredited school is required. Also, the candidate must provide an official transcript which shows a health-education major. Accepted majors would include health education, public health education, community health education, school health education, etc. The candidate’s transcript must include course titles.

If the candidate is not eligible because of his or her college major, then alternatively, he must have an official transcript which shows a minimum of 25 semester hours of course work with specific preparation that addresses the seven areas of responsibility covered in the exam. The candidate must also have maintained a “C” average or better.

Normally, those who take the exam have already graduated. There is, however, a 90-day eligibility option. This states that a student who will graduate within 90 days of a test date might in some situations be allowed to take the test. He or she must be attending an accrediting school and show an official transcript that shows a minimum of 25 semester hours of course work with preparation that addresses the seven areas of responsibility covered in the exam.

Your medical school or your undergraduate school’s medical department should have more information about upcoming dates for the CHES

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A Psychiatric Nursing Career

Ash — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 05:05:38 +0000

Few jobs can be more challenging than dealing with mentally ill patients so it takes a certain type of dedicated person who wants to pursue that avenue as a career. Assisting these mentally impaired patients with their medication and helping them to cope with their illness requires a strong-willed individual who is able to be effective under difficult circumstances.

A psychiatric nurse such as the PMHN Certification requires a minimum of an Associate’s Degree but more likely a Bachelor’s or Master’s Degree is desirable to afford you with the ability to have a position anywhere. Psychiatric nurses are also required to earn state licensure and pass the National Council Licensure Examination (NCLEX). These nurses work in hospitals, clinics or in nursing homes or private practices.

These nurses will work with difficult patients who are often angry, disoriented and uncooperative. Some patients will be aggressive and demanding and the physical and emotional demands will be huge. This position requires you to monitor and administer medication with those who are in distress, have some sort of mental illness and may have disabilities as well. Psychiatric nurses assist patients with dressing, bathing and serving them meals – and in some cases helping them to eat.

If a psychiatric nurse has had advanced training they are able to assist or lead with behavioral therapy or lead family sessions and are often called upon to help with crisis intervention. If you have a desire to help and care about people this is a career that will be very challenging yet very rewarding. You will encounter people of all ages and be exposed to every type of behavior – most of it not very pretty – but everyone needs help and this is a job that demands a lot of an individual but gives a lot in return. A psychiatric nursing career will definitely be fulfilling in every way.

A Nursing Educator is a Good Career Choice

Ash — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 05:04:11 +0000

With an aging population a career as a nursing educator promises a career path that will give you the opportunity to combine your knowledge of nursing with your desire to teach upcoming nurses. Many potential nursing candidates are unable to apply to some schools because of a shortage of nursing educators.

To become a nursing educator you must be a registered nurse and have a Master’s Degree in Nursing or a Doctoral Degree if you want to teach a graduate program. You must also have training as well as experience in a clinical specialty. If you have a Master’s Degree you can teach undergraduate students who are studying to become licensed practical nurses or LPNs and registered nurses or RNs. Teaching at the master’s and doctoral level is available for advanced practice nurses as well as nurse administrators, nurse researchers and others.

Many nursing educators combine the role of teacher along with continuing patient care giving the students they are teaching a role model to emulate as they progress in their studies. Nursing educators are also responsible for designing and/or revising academic programs or evaluating those that have been designed by others. Nurse educators also may work outside the classroom as Administrative Nurse Faculty, Clinical Nurse Educators, Staff Development Officers and other types of career opportunities.

With a high demand for nurse educators there is nevertheless a wide range in salaries with a lot depending on the specialty of the educator along with their years of experience or training and where the school is located. Nurse educators usually are paid significantly more than a registered nurse because of their increased knowledge and skills but are often comparable to an advanced practice nurse. In general, salaries range from $75,000 to $115,000 and offer flexibility in terms of work schedule and workload compared to a registered nurse.

3 Career Options for Nurses You Might Have Overlooked

Ash — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 05:03:04 +0000

When people consider job opportunities for nurses, they usually think about the same handful of possibilities: hospital nursing, assisting a private physician, or perhaps teaching at a nursing school. But here are five options that are often overlooked.

Clinical Research Associate (or CRA): This career path could find you working for contract research organizations (CROs) or pharmaceutical companies. While not popular in other parts of the world, in the West, particularly the U.S. and Europe, careers in this field abound. That’s because here, clinical research thrives and is widespread and drug companies also abound.

A CRA usually is required to do some travel, since the position involves coordinating, facilitating and monitoring a clinical trial’s progress as it’s conducted within a particular medical facility. Although this job can be quite exhausting, the pay is good, and it usually comes with appealing benefits such as a car plan and good insurance benefits. Bottom line: If you like to travel, you love your career in medicine but would like to try something other than standard hospital nursing, consider a career as a Clinical Research Associate.

Medical Coder: We’re not talking here about the coding or billing clerk who codes medical records for insurance or billing purposes. Rather, this position involves the person in coding of adverse events that have been observed, and prior / noncomitant medications used during a clinical trial.

To get into the field of coding specialist, a background in the area is helpful, but not always necessary, especially if you already have experience as a nurse. However, having a training certificate would obviously improve your chances.

As with the CRA, this position abounds in the U.S. more than in other countries because of the abundance of clinical trials here. And speaking of CRAs, an experienced one often qualifies for this managerial position. However, even if you’ve never worked in the field of clinical research, if you have supervisory experience, you might stand a good chance of being considered.

Although traditionally this position has not been occupied by nurses, more and more of them have found their way onto this career path in the past decade.

Medical Representative: Usually you’ll see this abbreviated to med rep. But however you spell it, this career path involves a lot of marketing and selling of medical supplies and products. Therefore, to qualify for the position, you must have an entrepreneurial spirit, an outgoing personality, and a strong desire to succeed and to stay on top, because competition is stiff in the field. You might think that this is more a career path for sales people, but drug companies prefer hiring nurses since they’re more familiar with the basics of the health field. But certainly, if you’re trained as a nurse and have some sales history, this could be a perfect career for you.

Have You Considered Becoming a Pediatric Nurse?

admin — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 22:34:47 +0000

If you like children and want to work with them you might want to consider becoming a pediatric nurse that will give you the opportunity to specialize in this area. A pediatric nurse is in direct contact with children every day and able to care and comfort them when they are ill or have another medical condition that takes them to the hospital.

Once you have obtained your nursing degree you can become certified as a pediatric nurse or CPN. There are other specialized advanced courses that you can also take such as Pediatric Advanced Life Support or PALS that is sponsored by the American Heart Association or the Emergency Nurse Pediatric Course through the Emergency Nurses Association and Emergency Medical Services for Children. These certifications will assist you in obtaining a position with a hospital that features a department especially for pediatrics.

A pediatric nurse works directly with the children to perform all the routine procedures that any nurse would such as obtain vital signs of temperature, heart rate and respiratory rate, perform catheterizations to collect urine, collect stool samples, administer medications, perform CPR, administer blood or assist with splinting of broken bones along with a myriad of other duties that are performed daily.

A pediatric nurse routinely comforts a child who has had an accident or is suffering from a disease which sometimes might be fatal. They work with the parents to assure them that the child is being well taken care of and to assist with education about medications or changing of dressings. A pediatric nurse is a person that the family can talk to and try to understand the scope of the medical issues they are dealing with. A pediatric nurse can be a very rewarding job because it is easy to know when you have made a child less afraid and calmed a parent’s concerns and offers a satisfying career choice.

Your New Career as a Nursing Instructor

admin — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 22:27:10 +0000

Many people in many professions feel that, buried deep inside of them, is a teacher, or a mentor, waiting to burst forth, to share the knowledge they have. This is as true for nurses as anywhere else. A significant number of nurses have the ability within them to train the next generation of nurses to be great in their field. These people should consider a career as a nursing instructor.

Nursing instructors work in hospitals, private clinics, and of course, colleges. Their job is to educate both students and medical staff. Their job responsibilities include developing curriculum, designing programs, leading lectures and providing hands-on training for practicing nurses and new ones. They might even advance to leadership positions as a university dean or department chair.

Because the next generation of nurses is being trained by the nursing instructor, this position obviously requires a lot of training. A minimum of a master’s degree, and preferably higher, is required, by major universities and medical centers as well as a valid practitioner’s license.

However, there are some smaller facilities which might consider qualified candidates who have just their Bachelor’s Degree along with their RN (registered nurse) license–provided they also have impressive field experience. These jobs, though, are getting harder to find as more institutions, even smaller ones, expect the higher degree level. Also, keep in mind that, in order to teach, a nursing instructor must have at least one year of medical / surgical experience.

Whether they work to guide new students, helping them slowly gain confidence, or whether they help professionals get better in their career, the position of nursing instructor requires experience, understanding of the field of nursing, and hopefully specialized knowledge in a specialized field. The top nursing instructor not only prepares new nursing students for the medical profession, but also serves as an active liaison between the medical field and the community at large.

Nursing educators are expected to be leaders within their communities. Furthermore, they’re expected to be outstanding researchers and communicators, and to have a passion for their professional and for discoveries within the field of nursing.

Over the past couple of decades, enrollment within nursing programs has increased consistently and significantly, as aspiring professionals try to keep up with the employment trends. In fact, there are many schools which are turning down qualified applicants, simply because there is a shortage of qualified nursing instructors.

To fill this need for top-flight nursing instructors, many hospitals, clinics and schools are hiring foreign-trained teachers. Other employers have begun increasing incentives, including offering outstanding benefit packages which include study grants, tuition waivers, and sometimes relocation assistance for the qualified candidate.

As a nursing educator, you can expect to make between $40,000 and $74,000, placing you in the 25th to 75th earning percentiles.

Nursing Career Option: Certified Diabetes Educator

Ash — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 22:17:28 +0000

Although the majority of people who become nurses do so because they like providing direct care to their patients, others prefer a more indirect route–the area of patient education. A career as a certified diabetes educator, or CDE, allows you to do just that.

With obesity a growing epidemic in the west, more people than ever are suffering from type II diabetes. To help deal with this epidemic, more nurse-educators are needed. A certified diabetes educator takes part in a career that is increasingly in demand. Plus, you have something of a choice: You can decide whether to work in a hospital setting, for a private physician, or with a public health department.

A diabetes educator can work one-on-one with her patients, teaching them how to use blood-sugar meters, how to use insulin, and how to properly take medications. These educators also help diabetes sufferers in making changes to their daily diet.

Although you might enjoy working one-on-one with a patient, you might also find a career in public health enjoyable. This could still include some work with individual patients, but would also entail making presentations and sponsoring community education events.

Certification for becoming a CDE comes from the National Certification Board for Diabetes Educators (NCBDE). To become a CDE you must first work for a minimum of two years in the field of diabetes education; you also must have a minimum of 1000 yours of diabetes education practice.

Passing an exam is also required to become certified as a diabetes educator. You can find places giving these exams throughout the country and at all different times of year.

After you’ve become a CDE, it’s important that you keep your certification current . You do this by taking part in continuing education as it becomes available each year. If you can’t find where courses are conducted, the certification board will help you locate one near you.

Becoming a certified diabetes educator can be a considerable investment, particularly of time. You can expect to spend a couple of years getting your initial certification. However, it’s worth the investment. For the foreseeable future, as a CDE, you should have no shortage of work opportunities, and you can usually decide which setting you’ll work in. Plus this is a career that will offer you much fulfillment.

Salary for a CDE is decent, too. You can expect to make somewhere between $43,000 and $63,000, depending on location, experience and other factors. As always, the amount of training you get in the way of workshops and seminars will also play a role in salary determination.

If you’re interested in the field of health education, then consider a career specifically in diabetes education. It’s exciting, in-demand and pays well.

The Internet’s Best Resume Preparation Sites

Ash — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 18:54:31 +0000

The Internet has been a godsend for job searchers. It makes it possible to find jobs that fit your skills, all across the country. But the Internet does more than that. There are also plenty of websites that help you with the actual preparation of your resume. Here are the 10 best that we’ve found (in no particular order):

Susan Ireland’s Resume Site, http://susanireland.com/resume/how-to-write . What sets this apart is that it approaches the subject as a workshop. You can take one free resume-preparation lesson at a time. And each lesson comes complete with an on-site video, to help make things clearer.
The Damn Good Resume, http://www.damngood.com , offers four main sections: Advice, Resume Samples, Books, and “The Jobs Lounge” (a blog). Particularly helpful in the Advice section is the article on Tough Resume Problems.
CollegeGrad.com has a huge section on developing resumes for the college student who is about to graduate. Most of the advice applies well to those about to exit from nursing school. The exhaustive resume section is at http://www.collegegrad.com/jobsearch/Best-College-Resumes .
The.Best.Resumes , http://tbrnet.com , bills itself as “The First Place to Go When You Want a Job.” With all the resources they offer for free, it’s hard to argue. They have an extensive section on developing great resumes, but an equally large section on perfecting your cover letter.
Got a Mentor lands on our list because they have a list of the best places online where you should post your resume. Find the site at http://gottamentor.com/ViewGeneralAdvice.aspx?g=26.
It only makes sense that the premier job-hunting site, Monster.com, would have plenty of resume-creation tips. And do they ever! The resume-tips section is sparse and, honestly, kind of ugly. But what they lack in style, they make up for in breadth–with five pages of articles pertaining to creating the perfect resume. It’s located at http://career-advice.monster.com/resumes-cover-letters/resume-writing-tips/jobs.aspx .
Pongo is a helpful site that features, not only resume-design tips, but a “Resume Builder,” i.e., a wizard-program that takes you through the process of building your own resume step-by-step, as you answer its questions. It offers a similar Cover Letter Builder. It’s at http://www.pongoresume.com .
Few things help with the preparation of your resume more than having samples to consult. And not many sites have a better or bigger selection than Best Sample Resume, http://www.bestsampleresume.com .
We’ve tried to feature only free sites on this list, but The Resume Clinic is included because of one neat feature. They offer a free critique of your resume, whether you hire them to create a new one or not. And it might be helpful to hear what a professional thinks about your current resume. You can find them at http://www.theresumeclinic.com .
And finally, something just for fun, from JobMob: The 150 Funniest Resume Mistakes, Bloopers and Blunders. Just one example: the candidate who included, with his resume, a letter of recommendation from his mom. See the hilarity for yourself at http://jobmob.co.il/blog/funniest-resume-mistakes .

There are literally hundreds more sites, but after you scan these ten, you should be equipped to make a superb resume–and to land the lob!

20 Great Tips for Finding a Job in Nursing

admin — Sun, 30 May 2010 18:31:03 +0000

Last year, “Rachel” graduated from her nursing program and immediately began complaining about how hard it was to find a job in nursing. Six months later, she had landed a position as a school nurse, while friends with other career goals were still looking. Reality had slapped her in the face: In this economy, jobs in all career fields are scarce, but jobs in nursing are more plentiful than on many other career paths.

Indeed, for the past decade, every study has reached the same conclusion: Nursing is expected to continue adding jobs at an impressive rate, especially as the population grows older and people live long enough to encounter more physical ailments. And what variety there is for those wanting to be a nurse! There are positions in burn care, ambulatory care, emergency rooms, developmental disabilities, home care, geriatrics, medical telemetry, intensive care, mother / baby care, oncology, pediatrics, operating room, psychiatric nursing, recovery room, psychiatric nursing, rehabilitation, school nursing, hospital floor nurse, and more.

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Nursing Certifications, Nursing Jobs and Nursing Exams

Help an Aging Population as a Gerontology Nurse

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Eligibility for the CHES

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A Psychiatric Nursing Career

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A Nursing Educator is a Good Career Choice

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3 Career Options for Nurses You Might Have Overlooked

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Have You Considered Becoming a Pediatric Nurse?

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Your New Career as a Nursing Instructor

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Nursing Career Option: Certified Diabetes Educator

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The Internet’s Best Resume Preparation Sites

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20 Great Tips for Finding a Job in Nursing

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