EMERGING

OPPORTUNITIES
FIELDS OF SPECIALIZATION
PSYCHIATRIC NURSE PRACTITIONERS

■ Also called a Mental Health Nurse Practitioner, Psychiatric

Nurse Practitioners do many of the same things a psychiatrist
does, including diagnosing mental illness and prescribing
medication.
■ As a Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner, you’ll also act as a
therapist, helping patients with depression, anxiety and suicidal
individuals, and other conditions that can be remedied with
counseling.
NURSE ANESTHETISTS

■ Nurse anesthetists are registered nurses who specialize in

anesthesiology with at least one year of critical care experience and
a master’s degree, which usually take two years to complete.
■ Nurse anesthesia specialists use the same techniques and
procedures to safely deliver the same types of anesthetic drugs for
every type of procedure that requires the patient to receive
anesthesia.
■ Nurse anesthetists as cost-effective providers because they offer
their patients a high quality of health care at a reasonable price.
LABOR AND DELIVERY

■ Labor and Delivery Nurses help bring people into the world
every day.
■ They care for women during labor and childbirth, monitoring the
baby and the mother, coaching mothers and assisting doctors.
■ As a Labor and Delivery Nurse, you’ll prepare women, and their
families, for the stages of giving birth and help patients with
breastfeeding after the baby is born.
■ [https://www.discovernursing.com/specialty/labor-and-delivery-
nurse#]
CARE COORDINATORS, CARE MANAGER, TRANSITIONAL
CARE COORDINATOR, NURSE CARE COORDINATOR,
PATIENT CARE COORDINATOR, PATIENT NAVIGATOR.

■ Care coordinators help patients navigate among multiple healthcare

providers and systems.
■ Manage chronic conditions. This may entail making appointments,
tracking medications and lab results and educating patients and
families about their conditions.
■ Care coordinators almost always are part of a multidisciplinary
healthcare team.
PATIENT SAFETY OFFICER, PATIENT SAFETY NURSE

■ Patient safety officers develop, implement, monitor and

maintain systems and protocols to reduce factors that
contribute to adverse patient outcomes.
■ They educate other practitioners on system-based causes of
errors, lead safety assessments and share evidence-based
patient safety strategies.
EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS DIRECTOR,
EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT DIRECTOR
■ Emergency planning and response has evolved rapidly since the 2001
terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
■ Many healthcare organizations have emergency preparedness managers
who develop and test systems for responding to everything from
multifatality traffic accidents to natural disasters to disease epidemics.
■ They coordinate with other responders in the community, schedule drills
and develop protocols.
■ During an emergency, they guide implementation of plans, assess those
plans and make changes to better prepare for the next emergency.
NURSE COACH, HEALTH COACH, LIFESTYLE
COACH

■ Nurse Coaches help clients define and achieve goals through

evidence-based behavioral change techniques. Coaching may be
done in person, by phone or by video calling.
■ Coaches usually focus on health and wellness issues, but also can
support staff or faculty development, business development or
general lifestyle goals.
■ Nurse Coaches may specialize in specific types of clients, such as
families with children with autism or people who want to lose
weight.
 CHIEF NURSING INFORMATICS OFFICER, CHIEF CLINICAL
INFORMATICS OFFICER

■ Chief nursing and chief clinical informatics officers figure out how to
implement technology to improve care quality.
■ They keep abreast of the latest trends, look for system problems and
find ways to solve them.
■ They work with vendors to ensure technology meets the facility’s needs
and work with management to implement, assess and improve systems.
[Resources: The Healthcare Information and Management Systems
Society at www.himss.org.]
 
FACULTY TEAM LEADER

■ Experts recognize the need for synergy between classroom

content and clinical practice, as well as the importance of
interdisciplinary education.
■ Just as nursing is moving toward community-based practice,
educational environments created by nursing education faculty
must be tailored to provide the necessary skills and knowledge
so new nurses can step into their roles confidently and
prepared to work within teams across disciplines.
 NURSE AND FAMILY COOPERATIVE
FACILITATOR
■ As health-care delivery moves out of the clinical setting and into the
community, nurses further connect with people where they live and
work.
■ This enables them to address immediate health concerns, as well as
overall social issues such as poverty, substance abuse and violence.
■ The opportunity to engage with families in their everyday
environment allows health-care leaders to provide assistance,
intervention and tools to manage their health-care issues and produce
more successful outcomes.
PRIMARY-CARE PROVIDER

■ Today, only 30 percent of all physicians practice primary care,

compared to about 70 percent 50 years ago. This percentage is
shrinking at a steady rate.
■ As primary-care providers, nurses work within clinics and
community environments handling intake screening,
preventive medicine, patient education and health coaching to
those who battle chronic diseases and complex illnesses.
[http://www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/nursing/about_us/new_opportuni
ties.html]