What is a Nurse Technician?

Nurse technicians are medical care providers who provide a wide range of patient care. The technician is responsible for the basic health and hygiene of a patient. He/she also helps immobile patients by lifting or moving them or pushing their wheelchair.

Also, they monitor patients' recovery or general well-being and report findings to the registered nurse. Nurse technicians prepare patients for medical examinations or procedures. Due to the job description, nurse technicians work under a registered nurse and are also known as nursing attendants or nursing aides.

The educational requirement for this position varies by state and employer. However, employers require a certified nursing technician program, a licensed practical nursing (LPN) or registered nursing (RN) diploma, an associate's degree, or a bachelor's degree program. Regardless, some employers may ask for more certification. Applicants must possess physical strength, compassion, communication skills, and emotional intelligence.

A nurse technician earns an average gross salary of $31,731. This ranges from $28,847 to $35,653.

What Does a Nurse Technician Do

There are certain skills that many nurse technicians have in order to accomplish their responsibilities. By taking a look through resumes, we were able to narrow down the most common skills for a person in this position. We discovered that a lot of resumes listed observational skills, emotional stability and organizational skills.

Learn more about what a Nurse Technician does

How To Become a Nurse Technician

If you're interested in becoming a nurse technician, one of the first things to consider is how much education you need. We've determined that 39.2% of nurse technicians have a bachelor's degree. In terms of higher education levels, we found that 3.5% of nurse technicians have master's degrees. Even though some nurse technicians have a college degree, it's possible to become one with only a high school degree or GED.

Learn More About How To Become a Nurse Technician

Nurse Technician Job Description

A nurse technician or a tech nurse is responsible for providing patients with assistance, usually with personal hygiene and other everyday activities. Their duties include bathing and shaving patients, dressing them, changing bed sheets, and monitoring their environment and physical state.

Learn more about Nurse Technician Job Description
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Nurse Technician Career Paths

In addition to switching up your job search, it might prove helpful to look at a career path for your specific job. Now, what's a career path you ask? Well, it's practically a map that shows how you might advance from one job title to another. Our career paths are especially detailed with salary changes. So, for example, if you started out with the role of registered nurse you might progress to a role such as registered nurse supervisor eventually. Later on in your career, you could end up with the title nursing director.

Nurse Technician

Average Salary for a Nurse Technician

Nurse Technicians in America make an average salary of $33,005 per year or $16 per hour. The top 10 percent makes over $40,000 per year, while the bottom 10 percent under $26,000 per year.
Average Nurse Technician Salary
$33,005 Yearly
$15.87 hourly
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What Am I Worth?

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Roles and Types of Nurse Technician

The role of a nurse technician includes a wide range of responsibilities. These responsibilities can vary based on an individual's specific job, company, or industry.Here are some general nurse technician responsibilities:

  • 1. Supports the mission, vision and values of munson healthcare2. Embraces
  • Functions in other areas, including front office or surgery department, as needed. Performs other incidental
  • Under the general supervision of the director

There are several types of nurse technician, including:

Technician

Role:

To be a technician, you have to know your stuff. Some may refer to you as an expert in your field or maybe people will know you as skilled in an art or craft. Then again, you may just be needed to look after technical equipment.

Your workload as a technician will vary, depending on what you're trained in. You may be needed to set up a new computer system or maybe you'll need to fix an electricity problem. Either way, you'll probably only need to work 40 hours a week.

The degree of education required for this job depends on what you're specific skillset is. Some technicians only need a high school diploma, others may want to complete an associate's program or earn a certificate to help their employment opportunities. There's definitely something for everyone in the field of technicians.

  • Average Salary: $38,045
  • Degree: Bachelor's Degree

Phlebotomist

Role:

A Phlebotomist is a medical technician specializing in blood collection for donations or blood tests. Phlebotomists are responsible for analyzing blood to diagnose illnesses or nutritional deficiencies and determine the efficicacy of medication. They perform blood transfusions and manage blood donations, identifying the blood identity of donor and patient.

They label and document blood samples, keeping track of information; making sure the storage conditions are appropriate and meticulously maintaining the cleanliness of equipment.

Phlebotomists work as part of medical teams or healthcare science staff in hospitals or laboratories and interact with nervous patients regularly, so being caring and kind and putting people at ease with your calm demeanor will be a big part of your job if you decide to take this path.

  • Average Salary: $33,713
  • Degree: Associate Degree

Patient Care Technician

Role:

So, you've decided to become a patient care technician. In addition to registered nurses, patients really look forward to having you by their side. You're an important piece of the puzzle. Speaking of RN's, as long as you get enough experience as a patient care technician, you may have the option to become an RN, eventually. It's definitely a nice little stepping stone.

Aside from knowing the opportunity you'll have in this career, becoming a patient care technician has a lot of great positives. Since you'll be working directly with patients, you'll be around a lot of people daily. Which makes this a very social job. If you're a social butterfly, you'll fit right in.

You have a lot of options of where you want to work when it comes to the patient care technician job. From hospitals and doctor's offices to nursing homes and long-term care facilities, you're needed in a lot of different places. It just depends on where you want to end up.

  • Average Salary: $32,806
  • Degree: Bachelor's Degree
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States With The Most Nurse Technician Jobs

Mouse over a state to see the number of active nurse technician jobs in each state. The darker areas on the map show where nurse technicians earn the highest salaries across all 50 states.

Average Salary: Job Openings:

Number Of Nurse Technician Jobs By State

RankStateNumber of JobsAverage Salary
1Florida6,524$29,055
2California5,074$40,344
3Texas5,039$30,635
4Illinois3,765$31,130
5New York3,758$33,423
6North Carolina3,491$29,739
7Pennsylvania3,447$30,705
8Georgia3,166$26,683
9Massachusetts3,067$35,744
10Indiana3,006$30,788
11Michigan3,004$30,707
12Ohio2,993$30,673
13Minnesota2,653$32,972
14New Jersey2,613$34,020
15Washington2,319$39,570
16Virginia2,075$28,907
17Missouri2,062$29,828
18Arizona1,782$34,216
19Colorado1,779$34,019
20Tennessee1,699$27,756
21Wisconsin1,665$31,479
22Maryland1,425$32,912
23Connecticut1,255$32,283
24Iowa1,210$32,121
25Kentucky1,208$29,040
26Alabama1,073$28,839
27Kansas1,044$31,230
28Louisiana1,022$26,822
29South Carolina1,017$28,700
30Oregon967$40,835
31Oklahoma908$31,310
32Arkansas801$26,254
33New Hampshire788$38,678
34Maine751$36,334
35Nebraska686$28,886
36Utah678$31,279
37New Mexico628$31,449
38West Virginia576$29,146
39Mississippi546$25,890
40Nevada455$38,097
41Idaho420$32,760
42Rhode Island396$33,730
43Delaware317$32,390
44North Dakota311$30,494
45Montana310$30,664
46South Dakota235$29,863
47Alaska223$37,471
48Vermont197$38,573
49Hawaii163$39,458
50Wyoming83$33,368

Nurse Technician Education

Nurse Technician Majors

Nursing
54.9 %
Business
4.8 %
Medical Assisting Services
4.3 %

Nurse Technician Degrees

Bachelors

39.2 %

Associate

29.2 %

High School Diploma

11.5 %

Top Skills For a Nurse Technician

The skills section on your resume can be almost as important as the experience section, so you want it to be an accurate portrayal of what you can do. Luckily, we've found all of the skills you'll need so even if you don't have these skills yet, you know what you need to work on. Out of all the resumes we looked through, 26.5% of nurse technicians listed patients on their resume, but soft skills such as observational skills and emotional stability are important as well.

Choose From 10+ Customizable Nurse Technician Resume templates

Zippia allows you to choose from different easy-to-use Nurse Technician templates, and provides you with expert advice. Using the templates, you can rest assured that the structure and format of your Nurse Technician resume is top notch. Choose a template with the colors, fonts & text sizes that are appropriate for your industry.

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Nurse Technician diversity

Nurse Technician Gender Distribution

Female
Female
83%
Male
Male
17%

After extensive research and analysis, Zippia's data science team found that:

  • Among nurse technicians, 83.1% of them are women, while 16.9% are men.

  • The most common race/ethnicity among nurse technicians is White, which makes up 60.8% of all nurse technicians.

  • The most common foreign language among nurse technicians is Spanish at 61.4%.

Online Courses For Nurse Technician That You May Like

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This course should be taken after the Symptom Management course and continues building your primary palliative care skills – communication, psychosocial support, goals of care, and symptom management. You will explore transitions in care such as survivorship and hospice. You will learn how to create a survivorship care plan and how to best support a patient. The course also covers spiritual care and will teach you how to screen for spiritual distress. Finally, you will learn the requirements...

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Best States For a Nurse Technician

Some places are better than others when it comes to starting a career as a nurse technician. The best states for people in this position are Oregon, California, Washington, and Hawaii. Nurse technicians make the most in Oregon with an average salary of $40,835. Whereas in California and Washington, they would average $40,344 and $39,570, respectively. While nurse technicians would only make an average of $39,458 in Hawaii, you would still make more there than in the rest of the country. We determined these as the best states based on job availability and pay. By finding the median salary, cost of living, and using the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Location Quotient, we narrowed down our list of states to these four.

1. New Hampshire

Total Nurse Technician Jobs: 788
Highest 10% Earn:
$48,000
Location Quotient:
1.52

$38,678

Avg. Salary

View 788 Nurse Technician Jobs In NH

2. Maine

Total Nurse Technician Jobs: 751
Highest 10% Earn:
$44,000
Location Quotient:
1.91

$36,334

Avg. Salary

View 751 Nurse Technician Jobs In ME

3. Washington

Total Nurse Technician Jobs: 2,319
Highest 10% Earn:
$48,000
Location Quotient:
1.07

$39,570

Avg. Salary

View 2,319 Nurse Technician Jobs In WA
Full List Of Best States For Nurse Technicians

How Do Nurse Technicians Rate Their Jobs?

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Work/Life balance
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Top Nurse Technician Employers

Most Common Employers For Nurse Technician

RankCompanyAverage SalaryHourly RateJob Openings
1Mayo Clinic$36,363$17.4843
2Encompass Health$36,122$17.37273
3Beaumont Health$35,368$17.0045
4Lexington Medical Center$33,837$16.27110
5Emory Healthcare$33,684$16.19115
6Freeman Health System$33,636$16.1750
7Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare$33,326$16.0253
8American Red Cross$33,300$16.0153
9White Plains Hospital$33,040$15.8864
10GBMC Healthcare$32,983$15.8648
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Nurse Technician Videos

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Becoming a Nurse Technician FAQs

Nurse Tech Vs. Cna

A nurse tech is someone who has advanced medical training in performing certain procedures, while a CNA (Certified Nurse Aide) is a trained and certified healthcare professional that assists nurses.

Nurse Technician Vs. Cna

A nurse technician performs the duties of a CNA but is also trained to perform some basic medical duties such as EKG readings and phlebotomy, while a CNA performs basic patient-care duties.

Have more questions? See all answers to common healthcare support questions.

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Updated April 6, 2023