Nursing Education

Nursing courses normally require good secondary school or college grades. Training is traditionally based in hospitals, though in some countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States there is now more emphasis on college-based training. A typical course lasts three years and involves general training in medicine as well as practical experience by working with patients under the supervision of senior nurses. The level of medical education required of a nurse varies from country to country; the United Kingdom, for example, is noted for the particularly high medical content of its nursing education. At the end of the course the student nurse takes examinations, administered either by the public health body or nursing councils depending on the particular country, in order to receive a licence or state registration. Once licensed or registered, he or she is free to practise the profession in any country which recognizes the qualification, although many countries reserve recognition for their own qualifications exclusively.

Many of the varied duties of a nurse are technical in nature, ranging from taking blood pressure to managing complex life-support systems in intensive care units. In addition, however, a nurse must be a teacher, counsellor, and manager, concerned with promoting and maintaining the health of patients, as well as caring for them when they are ill.

Nurses have both dependent and independent functions. The former are those that must be carried out under the orders of a licensed physician or dentist, including such duties as administering medication and changing dressings on wounds. Independent functions are those that nurses carry out based on their own professional judgement. Such duties include bathing patients, positioning them to prevent joint contractures, teaching people how best to care for themselves, and providing nutritional counselling.

Apart from hospitals, general practice surgeries, and clinics, nurses work in nursing and residential homes, occupational health services, hospices and residential care homes, the pharmaceutical industry, the prison service, universities and schools, on leisure cruise ships, or for the armed forces.