Could you take on a new career in 2017?

January is often a time when people plan to change careers and is a time when nursing courses offer places for those who want to follow that path.

You will need excellent organisational and time management skills and excellent listening and communication skills.

You’ll work in hospitals, nursing homes, health centres, clinics or prisons. In an NHS hospital you could work in accident and emergency, cardiac rehabilitation, outpatients, neonatal nursing or an operating theatre.

Your day-to-day duties could include: • Taking temperatures, blood

pressures and pulse rates • Helping doctors with physical

examinations • Giving drugs and injections • Cleaning and dressing wounds • Setting up drips and blood

transfusions • Using medical equipment • Checking patients’ progress • Working with doctors to decide

what care to give • Advising patients and their

relatives • Handling confidential information You’ll usually work 37.5 hours a week including evenings, weekends, night shifts and bank holidays. The job can be physically demanding.

Most jobs are in the NHS. You could work in hospital wards, nursing homes, hospices, schools, colleges, pr ivate hospitals and in the community, visiting patients at home. With experience, you could become a nursing sister, ward manager or team leader.

You could train as a midwife, neonatal nurse, health visitor, district or practice nurse. You could move into management, as a matron or director of nursing.

With a master’s degree, you could become an advanced nurse practitioner or clinical nurse specialist then a nurse consultant.

You could also become selfemployed or work overseas.