A pediatric nurse provides patient care for children. From birth to late teens, children will be cared for by pediatric nurses in hospitals, clinics, healthcare centers, or at doctors' offices. Their exact duties vary by setting.
Generally speaking, they monitor and identify children's symptoms, notice when a physical finding is abnormal, and make sure the child is emotionally stable, by mediating between children and medical professionals, advocating for the children's rights and perspective. Pediatric nurses are also responsible for communicating with the children's families and discussing treatments with them and informing them about the correct way to care for their child after discharge from the healthcare facility.
Being a pediatric nurse is a challenging, but extremely rewarding profession, if you have the necessary amount of patience and compassion to deal with the anxieties and demands both from the patients and from the part of the families. As children in your care might recover or might have terminal illnesses, being emotionally prepared is essential in this role.
There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being a pediatric nurse. For example, did you know that they make an average of $38.65 an hour? That's $80,401 a year!
Between 2018 and 2028, the career is expected to grow 12% and produce 371,500 job opportunities across the U.S.
There are certain skills that many pediatric nurses 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 communication skills, compassion and detail oriented.
When it comes to the most important skills required to be a pediatric nurse, we found that a lot of resumes listed 22.0% of pediatric nurses included rn, while 11.2% of resumes included bls, and 9.0% of resumes included health care. Hard skills like these are helpful to have when it comes to performing essential job responsibilities.
When it comes to searching for a job, many search for a key term or phrase. Instead, it might be more helpful to search by industry, as you might be missing jobs that you never thought about in industries that you didn't even think offered positions related to the pediatric nurse job title. But what industry to start with? Most pediatric nurses actually find jobs in the health care and professional industries.
If you're interested in becoming a pediatric nurse, one of the first things to consider is how much education you need. We've determined that 43.3% of pediatric nurses have a bachelor's degree. In terms of higher education levels, we found that 18.8% of pediatric nurses have master's degrees. Even though most pediatric nurses have a college degree, it's possible to become one with only a high school degree or GED.
Choosing the right major is always an important step when researching how to become a pediatric nurse. When we researched the most common majors for a pediatric nurse, we found that they most commonly earn bachelor's degree degrees or associate degree degrees. Other degrees that we often see on pediatric nurse resumes include master's degree degrees or diploma degrees.
You may find that experience in other jobs will help you become a pediatric nurse. In fact, many pediatric nurse jobs require experience in a role such as registered nurse. Meanwhile, many pediatric nurses also have previous career experience in roles such as staff nurse or licensed practical nurse.
