Resources & Guides for Nurses

NursingColleges.com is proud to announce the winner of the third annual scholarship contest, Jesutofunmi Oluwaleke! She is a senior pursuing a bachelor of nursing science (BSN) with a minor in business informatics at the University of Texas at Austin School of Nursing.

During their studies, nurses complete clinical hours where they learn to care for real patients, though for most students these hours are unpaid and come on top of classes, labs, and studying. RN apprenticeships offer a different arrangement: students are hired by a healthcare employer and earn an hourly wage while completing their required clinical hours on the job.

Nurse educators are highly skilled licensed RNs who train nursing students and provide ongoing education for professional nurses. They can be found in various settings, such as universities, community colleges, trade schools, and hospitals. A nurse educator is an informal term for RNs who oversee training programs, teach nursing in both clinical and classroom settings, and offer guidance to students at all levels of the nursing field.

Nurse practitioner residency programs, sometimes referred to as fellowship programs, are postgraduate programs designed to help NPs transition to practice, particularly in specialty areas. Many residency programs are geared towards advanced practice providers (APPs), a group that includes NPs and physician assistants (PAs).

Nurse practitioner (NP) fellowships are postgraduate programs that help NPs gain proficiency in a particular specialty. There’s a gap between the electives taken in one’s MSN or DNP program and the skills needed to work in a subspecialty area; fellowships fill it.

A new report from the AI NOW Institute is sounding the alarm about a slew of gig-work nursing platforms that promise flexibility for workers and lower labor costs for facilities, but do so at the expense of workers’ rights and healthcare regulation.

The decision to switch careers is a significant one. It’s an opportunity for someone unhappy with their current path to align their professional life with their personal values. For those who identify as empaths drawn to a career that offers learning, growth, and the chance to make a real difference, nursing could be their calling.

Coined by the Nursing Executive Centre of the Advisory Board, the experience-complexity gap describes the dangerously widening difference between the average nurse’s knowledge today and the rapidly increasing complexity of the patients they serve and the technology they must oversee. Put simply, patients have never been sicker, the technology required to keep them alive has never been more involved, and the nurses overseeing their care have never been less knowledgeable and experienced, through no fault of their own.

Under popular value-based care models, nursing rates are wrapped into the bigger hospital bill, making their contributions to business revenue invisible. Hospitals are rewarded for understaffing nurses because nurses are viewed as a cost in this financial model, no different than the gauze they use to wrap a wound or the IV pole they hang medications on.

While a nursing job in the US is often advertised as the start of a new American dream for these nurses, many find the experience a nightmare instead, thanks to the profoundly exploitative business practices many international recruitment agencies employ.