Nurse Practitioner Career and Programs

Nurse Practitioners: The Future of Primary Care

If a crystal ball were to highlight your future medical visits, it wouldn’t be uncommon for you to see a Nurse Practitioner, rather than a doctor, to fix what ails you. Besides performing the basic caretaking functions of nurses, nurse practitioners have additional training to allow them to diagnose and treat illnesses, order and interpret medical tests, as well as prescribe medication.

It takes two-four years of study (beyond a BSN) to complete this degree and education requirements are ratcheting up. But at the end of the day, being a nurse practitioner is still one of the highest paying nursing positions in health care. Think about it: an NP can provide many of the same services as a doctor, particularly in a primary care setting, which is emphasized in the impending health care reforms. Yet an NP’s salary, while substantial, is less than a doctor’s rate. Who do you expect to see around more in the hospitals and outpatient clinics?

What’s In It for NPs?

Like many jobs in the nursing industry, long-term prospects are booming for nurse practitioners, particularly with the dawn of health care reform and its emphasis on primary care. The most recent salary studies show an NP on average earns about $90,000 per year, with certain specializations going much higher. The projected job growth for nurses in general is 22%, although NPs aren’t broken out, and much of the growth will be in primary and preventative care – an NP’s forte.

Difficult but Rewarding

Expect to be in school for a long while. First you’ll need to get licensed as a nurse, then obtain a master’s degree plus certification, and, increasingly, a doctor of nursing practice, which requires three more years to complete. On the other hand, besides the fact they earn more and have more job responsibilities, nurse practitioners focus, perhaps even more so than doctors, on disease prevention. Helping people avoid getting sick can be an extremely gratifying up side to this job.