Five Fast-Growing Niches in Nursing: What’s Your Pick?

If you’re thinking of a healthcare career, there are several routes you can take. Healthcare is a vast field, with various jobs you can opt for apart from going the traditional way and becoming a doctor. Nursing is one of the most rewarding healthcare professions to pursue. It can help you achieve personal and professional growth. Also, it allows you to impact your clients’ lives profoundly and help them recover from an incredibly vulnerable period in their lives.

However, nursing isn’t a job limited to just being a bedside caregiver. Since its inception, the profession has evolved, and now nurses have various options to specialize in. If you’re interested in the field but are looking to explore the possibilities it has to offer, keep reading below. We’ve compiled a list of the fastest-growing nursing niches to help you decide.

Family nurse practitioner

If you’re looking for a dynamic career where you can work with different patients, becoming a family nurse practitioner is a good option. FNPs work in various settings, such as the home, offices, government institutes, and can even start a private practice. With an advanced degree, they can assume greater independence and can diagnose, treat and monitor patients on their own.

The demand for FNPs is expected to increase in the coming years, mainly because of the shortage of doctors. Becoming a family nurse practitioner is easy if you pick the right program. But if you want to manage a work/life balance, becoming an FNP online is your best bet. You can complete your education by creating a flexible learning schedule around your personal and professional commitments. Online learning also helps save time and money lost while traveling to a campus. The University of Texas – Arlington offers a degree online to be a nurse practitioner, if you’re thinking about becoming one.

Geriatric nursing

Geriatric nursing might be a good idea if you prefer working with older patients. It is a popular, rewarding niche to go for. As people age, they become prone to disorders, injuries, and conditions that require constant care. Geriatric nurses cater to the health-related issues that older individuals may face and work on making this last phase of life as comfortable as possible.

Geriatric nurses often work full-time alongside their clients in their homes. They play an instrumental role in helping elderly clients maintain some degree of independence in their lives. Geriatric nurses work towards understanding the physical shortcomings that their clients can encounter. And also emotional and mental ones. These people can sometimes need consistent care without requiring hospitalization, and senior nurses are well-equipped to handle their issues. With a rapidly growing elderly population, geriatric nurses are in high demand to help older patients live a comfortable life.

Nurse educator

With rapid technological and medical advancements, nursing is also evolving, much like all other professions. Thus, one of the most important nursing niches to pay attention to is that of nurse educators. The pandemic has led to many changes in healthcare, with much of healthcare now being provided online. Also, there are discoveries each day in the field, which lead to changing treatment protocols, assessment, and more.

Nurse educators help fresh nursing grads adjust to these changes and help them practice to the best of their capabilities. Nurse educators combine their theoretical knowledge with professional expertise and experience to provide inexperienced nurses with a holistic learning experience. Nurse educators can work on creating better, updated curriculums alongside delivering on-the-job training to junior healthcare practitioners. With the profession evolving so rapidly, the demand for nurse educators is on the rise too.

School nurse

If you enjoy working with children, you’ll love a career in school nursing. This is also one of the fastest-growing nursing niches, owing to the increased awareness of healthcare needs within academic settings. There are numerous issues children can encounter at school, ranging from accidents to illnesses. Moreover, students often need a trained professional to handle problems they may not be comfortable sharing with their teachers or parents.

School nursing is perfect if you don’t want to work in a traditional healthcare setting. Still, you will have to practice increased compassion and patience because your clients – students – will often have little understanding of their issues. School nurses thus need to practice their communication skills and ensure they can communicate effectively with students and their families.

Oncology nurse

A cancer diagnosis can be harrowing, even for the most thick-skinned patients. These patients need extra attention and care in this testing time, which oncology nurses can provide. Moreover, a patient’s family often needs to be educated on the disease and prepared for the treatment and prognosis no matter what it may be. Oncology nurses are vital in helping both patients and their families get through this incredibly challenging period.

They can help make treatment as comfortable as possible for their clients and can help them prepare for what’s to come ahead. Oncology nurses also monitor the patient’s progress and watch for signs of relapse. They can also help the patient and the family make informed decisions going forward, as cancer is often a disease that requires long-term management strategies.

Conclusion

If you’re looking to enter nursing, these are some of the fastest-growing fields to opt for. These fields don’t just promise growth but will allow you to impact people’s lives profoundly and help them overcome immense crises. Therefore, joining any of these fields can set you up for a lifetime of success and fulfillment.