With all the possible career paths a nurse has available, it’s sometimes quite difficult to make a final decision. A good way to get around this is to start as a Nurses Aide. Like all other nursing specialties, the Bureau of Labor Statistics rates the need for aides as “excellent,” meaning growth in the profession is above the national average. There are other perks too, ranging from easy access to financial aide and work-study programs with an nursing college.
The BLS defines a Nurses Aide as personnel who help care for physically or mentally ill, injured, disabled, or infirm individuals in hospitals, nursing care facilities, and mental health settings. Nursing aides and home health aides are among the occupations commonly referred to as direct care workers, due to their role in working with patients who need long-term care. The specific care they give depends on their specialty.
Nursing aides often are the principal caregivers and have more contact with residents than other members of the staff. Because some residents may stay in a nursing care facility for months or even years, aides develop positive, caring relationships with their patients. In 2008 about 24 percent of nursing aides, orderlies, and attendants and psychiatric aides worked part-time.
Nursing aide training is offered in high schools, vocational-technical centers, some nursing care facilities, and colleges, both on campus and online. Study covers body mechanics, nutrition, infection control and other subjects. Aides also may attend lectures, workshops, in-service training among other areas.
Overall employment of nursing aides is projected to grow 19 percent between 2008 and 2018, from 1.47 to 1.75 million, faster than the average for all occupations. Growth does vary for individual specialties. Another factor is a large percentage of aides leave because they go on to become licensed practical nurses, registered nurses and medical technicians, among other specialties.
A good incentive for nursing aides to move on is the wages. The BLS puts the range from $8.47 an hour to a ceiling of just short of $16.00, or about $32,000 annually. Compare this to the average wage of an LPN ($39,700) or RN ($60,000) and it’s easy to see why aides continue their education. On the other hand, the profession does come with its schedule flexibility, educational financial assistance and health care perks, so this can be a good program for working parents.
At the same time, it’s a good position to be in when one is trying to decide what distance learning masters one wants to pursue. A nursing aide can see first hand what is involved with being a med tech, registered nurse or move on to health insurance or the legal arena. They can also find out more about financial aid packages from their place of employment, educational facilities and even private organizations such as drug manufacturers and similar for-profit corporations.
In all, being an aide is a good place to start one’s online degree in healthcare. At the least, you get paid as you learn at a nursing university.
Join our revenue sharing program and earn more from Adsense. Get free traffic, backlinks, SEO and new visitors for your blog.
I am quite interesting in this topic hope you will elaborate more on it in future posts.
mba india
Yes I agree, what an awesome opportunity for those interested in nursing or home health care. Will definitely keep this in mind for future posts.
Sick of obtaining low numbers of useless traffic to your website? Well i want to let you know about a brand new underground tactic that makes myself $900 per day on 100% AUTOPILOT. I could truthfully be here all day and going into detail but why dont you simply check their site out? There is a excellent video that explains everything. So if your serious about making simple hard cash this is the site for you. Auto Traffic Avalanche