 What's happening guys? It's Shane here and in today's video we are going to be going over the career of nurse practitioner. I'm going to be answering all of the important questions that you have about the career of nurse practitioner like what kind of schooling is required, what kind of salary you can expect to make, and the best places to live in the United States for this career. Now if you enjoy videos like this and you want me to make more like it, you can let me know by gently tapping the like button, commenting down below, and then also if you haven't done it already subscribe and hit the notification bell. Now according to Wikipedia the definition of nurse practitioner is an advanced practice registered nurse and a type of mid-level practitioner. NPs are trained to assess patient needs, order and interpret diagnostic and laboratory tests, diagnose disease, formulate and prescribe treatment plans, and then NP training covers basic disease prevention, coordination of care, and health promotion but does not provide the depth of expertise needed to recognize more complex conditions. So basically what they do in layman's terms is they can prescribe and diagnose just like doctors do but they stay away from some of the more complex conditions and they tend to stay with some of the more basic ones. Now nurse practitioner is one of my favorite careers. It's one I've talked about quite a bit on this channel and I think it's great for people who have a passion for health care. They want to take care of people but they don't necessarily want to go hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and then also have to go to school for a very long period of time usually about eight years and then another three to seven years for residency and then they might even do something more after that which if you're not aware of what I'm talking about that is what medical doctors have to do generally. Now another great thing about working as a nurse practitioner is you don't have to commit nearly as much as you have to do if you choose other types of careers. So there are many different levels of nurses. There's nurses that are basically at the associate level then there's nurses that are at the bachelor's level or BSN and then there's nurses at the master's level which would be nurse practitioner and then that's actually moving more towards a doctorate level nurse which would be DNP. So one thing that's really cool is you can get one nursing degree work for a few years then you want to further your skills and your knowledge you get the next nursing degree work for a few more years you want to further your skills and your knowledge get the next one and then the next one. So it's a really nice career progression where you're learning things you get to work and implement those things that you learn then you learn more you get to work and implement etc etc whereas with a lot of other health care careers you basically learn everything at once it's like a big bolostose of knowledge and then after that you finally get to work and implement what you've learned. Now BLS groups together nurse practitioners with nurse midwives and nurse anesthetists these are all APRNs or advanced practice registered nurses and overall there's about 220,000 nurse practitioner jobs 44,000 nurse anesthetist jobs and 7,300 nurse midwives jobs. Next we're going to be talking about the job satisfaction. So are nurse practitioners happy? Well according to career explorer.com they are about average they're about 3.1 out of 5 stars which is the bottom 42% of careers. Now according to pay scale they don't have nurse practitioners specifically but they have two very similar careers which is registered nurse and LPN and they do have very high meaning as well as job satisfaction scores. So job satisfaction is one thing that's just how much you enjoy your job on a day-to-day basis meaning is a little bit different it's how much you think your job positively impacts the world which does tend to be a slightly better indicator of your long-term happiness with your career. So I can say working in healthcare myself that sometimes it gets completely overwhelming you are going to get worked super hard if you go into healthcare. So that's something you definitely need to be aware of if you're somebody who does not want a very fast high-paced job where you're doing a lot of things all at once you probably don't want to go into healthcare. Now with that being said your job satisfaction is going to be significantly impacted by where you work. So for instance on Glassdoor.com Houston Methodist nurse practitioners rate that about 4.3 stars so they're very happy working at Houston Methodist. However there are many other examples where nurse practitioners are not happy so definitely look up the hospital or the clinic that you're thinking about working at on a site like Glassdoor.com because that is probably going to significantly affect your happiness. Now when it comes to how to become a nurse practitioner at this exact moment recording this video you need a master's level degree. However the career is moving towards needing a doctorate level degree very soon. So first you have to get the degree then you have to pass a national certification exam and then you have to get licensed with your state as well. So this is very common with healthcare related careers you have to get the degree first and then you have to pass certain exams with the state in order to become certified. Now most APRN or advanced practice registered nurse programs prefer people who already have their bachelors in nursing. However there are exceptions to this sometimes you can get into a program with just an associates degree sometimes you can kind of pivot careers if you have a different healthcare related degree like maybe you became a pharmacist or you became a physician associate you can actually pivot into becoming an APRN as well. So definitely look into your options there. According to the government about 74% of nurse practitioners have a master's level degree and around 17% at this point have a doctoral level degree. So the vast majority of nurse practitioners have either a master's or a doctorate. The few that don't have a master's or a doctorate were likely healthcare professionals that got grandfathered into the system before the standards were created. Next we're going to be talking about the pay for nurse practitioners in the United States of America. So according to BLS which again they bunch together nurse practitioner midwife as well as nurse anesthetist they make around $17,000 a year which is phenomenal. Now if you compare that to other healthcare practitioners that do diagnosis as well as treatment they make around $84,000 a year so it's much higher than that and then all occupations in general make around $41,000 so it's almost three times higher and if you break it down even further than that nurse anesthetists make around $183,000 a year so that's almost as much as a medical doctor. And if you look at the different settings that they work in ones who work in hospitals that are state, local or private make around $124,000 a year and then the lowest paying setting is educational services which are state, local and private and they make around $111,000 a year. According to glass door they make around $109,000 so we're seeing some level of consistency here. So yeah overall nurse practitioners make really, really good money. I usually like to say on this channel once you get past a certain point the money doesn't really matter that much anymore and for some people that's going to be around $75,000 a year other people it might be six figures it really depends on where you live and what your goals are. Now when it comes to the job outlook that's where nurse practitioner shines even more. According to BLS there are 271,000 nurse practitioners and they are expected to grow at 45% which is much faster than average. You can compare this to other similar healthcare related careers at 12% and other occupations in general at 8%. And as the baby boomer population reaches the age where they're going to need more and more healthcare treatment, nurse practitioners and APRNs are going to be incredibly important to meet that demand. In fact this is probably one of the main reasons why nurse practitioners were given so much power and ability to prescribe, diagnose, etc is so that they could help doctors meet that demand. And over time nurse practitioners are likely going to be able to perform even more services than they do now. Now when it comes to whether nurse practitioner as a career will be automated according to willrobotstakemyjob.com there is a 9% automation risk and polling shows it at about 25%. So that is very, very low healthcare professionals will be one of the last types of careers to be automated and if we ever get to the point where healthcare professionals as a career are automated we probably won't need to work anymore so you won't be watching videos on jobs anyways. Now according to government websites some of the knowledge that you need to know in order to excel as a nurse practitioner are going to be medicine of course, therapy and counseling. You're going to have a very good grasp of the English language if you work in the United States. When it comes to math and science you're going to have to have a very good grasp of biology, psychology as well as chemistry and business related skills it's very good to have good customer service and in the medical field we refer to this as bedside manner. Some of the most important skills for a nurse practitioner according to the government are going to be listening to others, not interrupting and asking good questions, reading work related information, problem solving i.e. noticing a problem and figuring it out the best way to solve it and then socially understanding people's reactions and looking for ways to help people and when it comes to important abilities you might need verbal you need to read and understand what is written communicate by speaking ideas and logic you want to make general rules or come up with answers from lots of detailed information and then you also want to be able to notice when problems happen visual understanding you need to be able to see hidden patterns and then quickly know what you are looking at and then when it comes to attention you need to be able to do two or more things at the same time and that is very important in the medical field let me tell you so yeah definitely very important to be good at problem solving as well as noticing patterns and then some of the personality characteristics you might see in someone who would excel in this career would be helping people teaching talking attention to detail dependability integrity concern for others adaptability and flexibility as well as stress tolerance so a lot of people think that you have to be like an extrovert in order to be good in the medical field and I actually don't think that's true because most of the time you're just going to be talking to people on a one-on-one basis or maybe one person is talking to like two people for the most part you aren't going to have to talk to a ton of different people so a lot of the time introverts are actually okay with that as long as they're only talking to like one other person or maybe two so don't necessarily be afraid of this career if you are an introvert now when it comes to some of the tasks you might do on a day-to-day basis according to the government again I'm just going to have them pop up on the screen here maintain complete and detailed records of patients healthcare plans and prognosis develop treatment plans based on scientific rational standards of care and professional practice guidelines and provide patients with information needed to promote health reduce risk factors or prevent disease or disability so I'll have that pop up on the screen you can you know pause the video and read that if you'd like to some of the technology-related skills that are important in this profession would be cloud-based data access and sharing software like Microsoft SharePoint database user interface and query software like Microsoft Access electronic mail software like Microsoft Outlook so as you can see this is actually really simple stuff it's stuff that you've probably already used yourself or you've used some version of a program that's very similar to this the one that's not as simple but you don't necessarily have an opportunity to get used to it until you actually start working or at least interning is going to be some of the medical software such as epic systems but again I'll let this just pop up on the screen so that you can become familiar with it and see some of the technology that you might use when it comes to different tools you might use some of them might include cardiac output monitoring units cardiac pacemaker generators or cardiac resynchronization therapy pacemakers and a bunch of other ones that are going to vary depending on the specialty that you go into as a nurse practitioner some of the work activities you might do would be documenting and recording information making decisions and problem solving getting information and again there's a bunch of them on there so I'll let you pause if you want to look at it the certifications that you might get are going to vary depending on the specialty that you go into but here are some of the important ones I'll have them pop up on the screen some of the best states to live in if you are a nurse practitioner when it comes to the amount of employment are going to be Texas California New York Florida and Tennessee some of the best states to live in when it comes to how much you get paid are going to be California New Jersey New York Washington and Massachusetts and then if you include those factors as well as a bunch of others you'll see that the top five are going to be New Mexico Alaska Massachusetts Washington and Vermont with New Mexico being number one the five worst states to live in as a nurse practitioner are going to be Hawaii Georgia South Carolina Nebraska and Alabama with Alabama being the absolute worst now if you haven't checked it out already and you're still searching for what the best career for you is check out my six-step guide to choosing your dream career it's totally free it's going to be available down in the description below check my other videos out right here I made them just for you go ahead gently tap that like button hit the subscribe button ring the notification bell and comment down below any thoughts comments criticisms etc the criticisms etc that you have on the video and I will see you next time