Nursing remains a career with fairly strong employment opportunities, in spite of the slow economy. A variety of jobs site are reporting not just a steady job market for nurses, but one that’s expected to rise to the point where a shortage of nurses is expected to arise in the next 5 – 8 years.
Your current qualifications and experience will determine the type of nursing degree you’ll want to consider. But the most popular online degree for nurses is the very widely accepted RN to BSN degree, for licensed RMs who want to take a step up to a more specialized position or work in a higher quality health facility. Nurses who already have a BA or BS look to the many specialized nursing master’s degrees, which can provide entree into management and, potentially, result in increased earnings.
A Graduate Nursing Degree
Nursing master’s degrees come in a variety of clinical and management specialties. Nurses who have a strong desire to stop working 100% in direct patient care often opt for a masters in nursing administration, which can result in a position managing staff shifts and overseeing treatment in a larger hospital, or a nursing education masters, which tends to focus more on preparing you to train new nurses or to help experienced nurses learn new techniques or even take new degree or certificate programs. A newer specialty that’s grown quickly is informatics, which involves organizing and understanding the huge volume of medical and insurance records generated today in all types of clinics and hospitals.
See a complete list of schools offering MASTER’S in nursing degrees
See a complete list of schools offering BACHELOR’S degrees in nursing