Advertisement
Advertisement
|
Home :: Career Center
:: Healthcare Career Profiles :: Nursing Career Profiles
Pediatric Nurse Practitioner - Career Profile |
Career OverviewCaring for the young, infants, children, and adolescents, is the principle role of the pediatric nurse practitioner in the health care system. Some infants have medical problems from birth. Some children become ill and are no longer able to thrive. Adolescents may face a number of issues as they develop and come to terms with illnesses or injuries that affect them.
Pediatric nurse practitioners must help children and their parents come to terms with illness and injury, they must help them learn and grow from the experiences and understand their feelings. As medical professionals, pediatric nurses must also develop and facilitate treatment for young patients.
Children are admitted to hospitals a last resort under the current system, but pediatric nurses have plenty of employment opportunities in general hospital, Children's hospitals, general clinics, community health care centers, and private practices.
Pediatric nurse practitioners need to be able to function in high-stress situations. They certainly need to be able to communicate with children and win their cooperation, but they also need to have good people skills with adults, because in many cases, pediatric nurses can only help children, diagnose their conditions and otherwise treat them, by securing the cooperation of parents and caretakers. A keen understanding and appreciation of family dynamics and relationships is useful for pediatric nurses.
As nursing expands and develops as a career, its practice becoming increasingly independent from the practice of medicine by trained physicians, the work of qualified registered nurses in specific fields will become all the more important to the successful treatment of patients.
|
Career RequirementsTo be accepted by a nurse-practitioner program, candidates must be registered nurses and hold at least a Bachelor's Degree in nursing from an accredited institution.
Nurse practitioner training programs last between 18 months and 24 months and typically involve both classroom study and clinical training. The classroom instruction is relatively basic, exploring the most basic issues of preventative health care, proper nutrition, and basic anatomy and physiology, because most nurse practitioners have only the most basic exposure to medical theory.
Practitioners who specialize in pediatric medicine have experience in general medicine, amounting to usually at least one year's work of supervised clinical experience.
Some institutions offer specialist training programs and certification in pediatric nursing. More information about training programs and certification is available through the following organization:
National Association of Pediatric Nurse Practitioners
20 Brace Rd., Ste. 2000,
Cherry Hill, NJ 08034
www.napnap.org
American Academy of Nurse Practitioners
P.O. Box 12846,
Austin, TX 78711
www.aanp.org
American Nurses Credentialing Center
600 Maryland Ave., SW, Suite 100 West
Washington, D.C. 20024-2571
(800) 284-2378
American Nurses' Association
8518 Georgia Ave.,
Ste. 400,
Silver Spring, MD 20910
www.nursingworld.org
The National Organization of Nurse Practitioner Faculties,
National Directory of Nurse Practitioner Programs
1522 K St. NW, Ste. 702,
Washington, DC 20005
www.nonpf.com
|
Advertisement
|
Job OutlookNurse practitioners who specialize in pediatric care are likely to remain valued members of the medical community. As the role of nurses expands over the next ten years, it is likely that their role in the improvement of pediatric care for patients and general communities will also expand and that they may enjoy a larger role in administrative duties and policy-making within this field.
|
Career TrackSee Nurse Practitioner
|
CompensationSee Nurse Practitioner
|
|