The health care industry is short of qualified nursing professionals
these days, an issue that began to present itself approximately twenty
years ago and has grown steadily deeper since that time. Due to this
shortage, incentives to attract new student nurses have become quite
widespread. A variety of scholarships and grants are available to ease
student nurses along the path to a nursing license, and once it has
been obtained, the employment opportunities are plentiful in nearly
every health care category.
Nursing careers have changed
quite a bit over recent years. Advances in medical treatments and
technologies have made nursing more challenging, with the standards of
qualification and education more stringent. Nurses these days,
responsible for procedures and treatments that were the exclusive
domain of the physician years ago, are no longer relegated to bandages
and bedpans.
Nursing students graduating today will find
themselves doing much more than the simple bedside care that was
standard for earlier generations of nurses. Nursing professionals can
choose from a wide variety of specializations that include acute care,
trauma, operating room practice, pediatrics, newborn or adult intensive
care, and coronary care, to name just a few of the hundreds of
available options. These are highly skilled professional positions,
requiring critical thinking and technical skills, offering exciting
career opportunities for current nursing students.
With the
spiraling demand for nursing professionals in the job market today, a
vast array of incentive programs have become available to nursing
students. Grants and scholarships abound in the field, especially in
areas hardest hit by the nurse shortage. Many hospitals across the
country offer full school funding for nursing students, in return for
an agreement to join their staff upon graduation and remain for a set
period of time.
Affordable nursing school education is
easier to find these days than ever before, and the field is wide open
for advancement for those graduating nursing students. Few careers
offer the satisfaction and security that can be found in the nursing
profession today.