Health and care
What does a Registered Nurse do?
Looking after people directly, often when they are at their worst.
What the day is like
- Indoors, under a roof.
- Tools, materials, your body.
- People all day.
- Right or wrong, to a standard.
- No two days alike.
The facts
- Pay
- $97,550 a year, median
- Registered Nurses, May 2025
- Usually needs
- Bachelor's degree
- Several years, and usually a formal qualification.
- Jobs
- +6% projected change in jobs, 2025-2035 projections
- Demand looks growing slowly
What is good about it
- It pays well against the rest of the work on this site.
- No two days are the same, if that is what you want from a week.
- You can see what you did at the end of the day.
What people find hard about it
- Twelve-hour shifts
- Distress and death
- Understaffed shifts
The training is long and the first years are hard; people leave for the shifts, not the patients.
Will machines take this job?
Hard for machines to take over. Notes and scheduling are automating. Being in the room with a frightened person is not.
How to find out whether it suits you
Arrange a shadowing shift on a ward, including the unglamorous hours.
Would this actually suit you?
CareerDNA works that out from what you choose rather than from what you say about yourself: two minutes of choosing between real jobs, a few puzzles, and some questions about what you are like. It is free, it saves as you go, and it will tell you plainly where the answer is thin.