Upon being asked to describe what a nurse does, the typical person will respond that nurses give shots or they take care of sick people in the hospital. Often unknown to the general public is the fact that a career in nursing can also cross over into medical research. Nurse researchers study and seek out solutions concerning various issues in health, healthcare, and illness.
According to the National Institute of Nursing Research, this profession has four main areas of focus:
- Building the scientific foundation for clinical practice
- Preventing disease and disability
- Managing and eliminating symptoms caused by illness
- Enhancing end-of-life and palliative care
Under these umbrella categories, there are many opportunities for nurse researchers to specialize under the common goal of bringing “science to life“. They scour medical journals, collect patient data, run experiments, and facilitate clinical studies to discover new, more efficient treatments.
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A nurse researcher is an excellent career for someone who wishes to work in healthcare and help others but desires to do so from a more research-centric approach. It is more of a behind-the-scenes profession than traditional nursing and allows the individual to be on the cutting edge of new medical developments. Like other research positions, nurse researchers must be curious and persistent, since their projects will not always yield immediate results, but ultimately their research may pay off in spectacular ways, such as finding ways to elongate a patient’s life or improve his or her quality of life. In this sense, it is a demanding and occasionally frustrating profession, but in the end, being a nurse researcher is very rewarding.
The path to becoming a nurse researcher entails higher education beyond college as well as extensive training. Most individuals in this profession start out as registered nurses with a bachelor’s degree in nursing. They then obtain at least a master’s degree in nursing, and many go on to receive a PhD in the field. Nurse researchers can work their way up from a standard nurse researcher to a senior nurse researcher, then to a researcher nurse supervisor or manager. Nurse researchers make one of the highest salaries in all of nursing with an average salary of $95,000 per year.
To find out more about nurse researchers, check out these informative videos:
- National Institute of Nursing Research: “Nursing Research: Bringing Science to Life”
- Nurses Without Borders: “The role of the Research Nurse”
