You can find a nurse practitioner specialties list here, but one type, family nurse practitioners, are a rather new thing, though nurse practitioners have been increasingly common over the past few years. Family nurse practitioners are a rather new thing, though nurse practitioners have been increasingly common over the past few years. Family nurse practitioners are the functional equivalents to the family doctor and are also implicated in almost all aspects of the medical process. A career as a family nurse practitioner can be very fulfilling and FNPs enjoy great prospects as well. Here are four reasons you should become a family nurse practitioner.
The Pay Rate
Family nurse practitioners earn around a hundred thousand dollars a year on average. Depending on where you live and the type of workplace, hourly rates for nurse practitioners range from $35 to $70 an hour. The median hourly wages for family nurse practitioners are higher for those working in hospitals and outpatient medical centers.
Family nurse practitioners out-earn RNs by around $30,000 a year. An LPN who becomes an FNP more than doubles his or her earnings.
The Opportunities
One reason to become a family nurse practitioner is the ability to find a job anywhere. You could work in an urban medical center, clinics in the suburbs, or a doctor’s office in a rural area. Or you could work in one of the doc in a box clinic, which are popping up in pharmacies and big box stores. Those retailers value having a nurse practitioner on staff, since the patients waiting to see a medical professional are guaranteed to fill their prescriptions and buy anything else they need while at the store. If you live near a college, you could work in the university health center. And you’re qualified to work for the local schools as a school nurse.
A side benefit of nursing is how often your employer is willing to pay for your schooling in return for a commitment to work for them for a certain number of years. This means you may be able to earn your nurse practitioner degree while still working part time or full time and get access to higher paying positions when you’re done.
You don’t have to go away to school to earn a family nurse practitioner degree either. Georgetown University and many reputable schools are now offering online FNP degrees for student nurses looking for advancement. If you want to learn more about their program, go to https://online.nursing.georgetown.edu/academics/family-nurse-practitioner-fnp/.
How Much Society Needs You
Nurse practitioners, like doctors, are at the front lines of healthcare. And since the number of medical school slots has been capped for years despite growing demand for doctors, family nurse practitioners have evolved to fill in the gap.
Many clinics and urgent care centers hire nurse practitioners to provide affordable healthcare that communities desperately need. This is especially true in the twenty states where family nurse practitioners are allowed to work with full authority, meaning they don’t have to work under the supervision of a practicing physician. Even when they do need to work under a supervising physician, they have far more authority than a registered nurse and can handle many basic cases.
The demand of a growing and aging population relative to the constrained supply of doctors explains why the demand for family nurse practitioners is expected to grow by a third over the next ten years. That’s three times the rate at which the general labor market will expand.
The Flexibility
We already addressed the wide array of places you could find work as a family nurse practitioner, whether in a small office in the local pharmacy or in the clinic attached to the regional hospital and in cities large and small. What we haven’t discussed yet is the schedule flexibility.
Nurses know that they can earn more working weekends and evenings or working in hospitals and emergency care facilities instead of a doctor’s office. One of the benefits of being a family nurse practitioner is that you could possibly earn as much working weekends in an urgent care clinic or doc in a box facility than you could work full time in a doctor’s office.
Another benefit of working as a family nurse practitioner is that you have more autonomy in your work while still being able to spend significant time with your patients. Studies are finding that patients of FNPs have better health outcomes because the nurse practitioner is able to take the time to learn about their symptoms and educate them in how to live with their condition instead of rushing to process as many patients as possible.
Several states allow family nurse practitioners to open and run clinics on their own. There are more than 200 nurse practitioner run clinics in the U.S.
Family nurse practitioners aren’t paid as much as general practitioners, but they’re well-paid. They enjoy many of the same opportunities as doctors and are gaining more flexibility in the workplace. They can also work almost anywhere and are in great demand.
