Author · 205 posts
RN · Medical-Surgical nurse & health writer
Meet Nathan, a registered nurse with over five years of experience in Medical-Surgical care, based in New York City. Having worked with a wide range of patients through some of their most vulnerable moments, Nathan brings a grounded, real-world perspective to his writing on healthcare. His goal is simple: to bridge the gap between medical knowledge and everyday understanding, making health topics feel less intimidating and more empowering for everyone. When he's not caring for patients, Nathan channels his passion for medicine into writing that educates, comforts and inspires.
No state board of nursing requires a Doctor of Nursing Practice to work as a nurse practitioner, and neither certification body demands one. The 2015 target came from a 2004 professional recommendation, not legislation. The one genuine exception among APRN roles is nurse anesthesia.
There is no separate exam for internationally educated nurses — the NCLEX is the same one US-educated candidates sit. What differs is everything around it: credentials evaluation, English proficiency, VisaScreen and your state board, which decides the requirements and the order.
An MSN is one degree name covering two different careers. The APRN tracks lead to a certification exam and a state licence; the non-clinical tracks lead to leadership, informatics or education. Choosing the track matters more than choosing the school, because only one of those is hard to undo.
RN is a licence, BSN is a degree, CNA is a state certification and LPN is a separate licence with a narrower scope. Confusing those four is the category error behind most nursing-career questions. Here is the credential family in one view, with the BLS wage for each and the route that fits your situation.
Ask ten nurses what they do and you get ten different answers, because nursing is not one job. A core set of duties holds everywhere — assessment, medication, monitoring, teaching, advocacy — and beyond that, two nurses with identical licences can have unrecognisably different weeks.
A wound care nurse is consulted for specific cases rather than assigned a patient list. That single structural difference — consulted, not assigned — changes the shape of the day more than the clinical content does, and it is the part most descriptions of the role leave out.
A PICU nurse cares for critically ill patients ranging from infants of about 2 kg to adolescents well over 100 kg — on the same unit, sometimes in the same shift. Every drug dose is weight-based and every piece of equipment is size-matched, which is what makes the range, not the acuity alone, the hard part.
A public health nurse applies clinical nursing knowledge to a community rather than an individual. One case of pertussis at a school is a patient to a clinical nurse and an exposure investigation to a public health nurse. That shift in the unit of care is what defines the specialty.
Pre-nursing is an advising track, not a degree and not an admission. No transcript will ever read "pre-nursing, completed". It means you intend to apply to a nursing programme — a separate decision, made later, by someone else. Knowing that early is what protects your application cycle.
Most people research NP school from the wrong end, comparing institutions before deciding what they want to be certified to treat. There are three decisions and they have an order: population focus first, then degree, then school. Only the first one is close to irreversible.
The headline that 40% of nurses are leaving comes from a real study and does not mean what most articles claim. The 39.9% figure measures stated intent to leave or retire within five years, not resignations. There is no published nurse burnout rate, and this page will not invent one.
"Nurse educator" covers two genuinely different jobs. The academic nurse educator teaches in a nursing school and answers to a curriculum; the clinical or professional development educator works inside a hospital and teaches colleagues. Same title, different employers, different entry routes.
