It's a growing field without enough people going into it.

At 51, Ray Pettigrew is the oldest student in his nursing school B.A. program at the University of Kansas. He's also one of only six men in a class of about 130.

That doesn't bother him. Pettigrew is a firefighter who started thinking about nursing school a few years back when he noticed that his body didn't recover after fires as fast as when he started 15 years ago. He'll be eligible to retire and collect a pension in two years, but he doesn't want to rely on that income, especially since his wife's corporate job might disappear like so many others.
"With the economy the way it is, I need to work," he says. He has two children, ages seven and nine. "I need to transition to something where I can work for a long time, and I think my job prospects in nursing are excellent."

He's right. About 30,000 registered nurses need to enter the workforce each year to meet the nation's growing health care needs, according to the Council on Physician and Nurse Supply, an independent group of health care leaders with offices at the University of Pennsylvania.

The need is great because the aging population will require more and more health care, and retiring baby boomers will leave thousands of vacancies in the field over the next 10 years. The shortage is exacerbated by a lack of educators to teach in nursing programs.

The good news for people like Pettigrew, who want to work while attending school, is that there are several ways to get training. Associate programs at community colleges take about two years to complete, and many schools offer a variety of courses online, in the evenings or on weekends.

"Many of our students work 40 or more hours a week while going to school," says Jean M. Wortock, dean of the College of Nursing at St. Petersburg College, near Tampa, Fla.

Another option is an accelerated nursing program, which compresses all the training into about 18 months. Here is a list of accelerated nursing programs.

There are also B.A. programs like the one Pettigrew is in. The advantage of a B.A. is that you can then go on to get an M.A. or even a Ph.D. and become a nurse anesthetist or another kind of nursing specialist, or teach nursing yourself.

All programs require you to complete some number of clinical hours. You typically can do so with eight-week rotations at a hospital or community clinic. At St. Petersburg College, students are required to do more than 600 hours of clinical time. They can complete 25% of it using a human patient simulator. The simulator can do things like suffer a cardiac arrest that requires CPR and the administration of drugs.

Before you begin your formal training, you must complete certain prerequisites. They vary from school to school, but often they include courses in anatomy and physiology, psychology, microbiology, statistics and ethics. For Pettigrew, who had a liberal arts degree, that meant about three and a half years of coursework. He spread it out, taking some online, some in the evenings and some on weekends.

Before landing a job, all beginning registered nurses must pass a universal licensing exam. Once that's completed, there are many paths they can take. "Throughout your life, this career gives you so many options," says Karen L. Miller, dean of the nursing school and senior vice chancellor at the University of Kansas Medical Center. "Not only are there many specialties to get into, but you can have a variety of choices in terms of how much you work, how many hours and where you work."

Many nurses choose to work three 12-hour shifts a week. Some sign up with a traveling nurse agency that sends them to spots all over the world for varying periods. Salary depends on your specialty and where in the country you work. Miller says that in the Midwest, where most of her students work, starting salaries range from $45,000 to $50,000. In California, she adds, a new nurse can make more than $80,000.

There's even more money to be made for nurses who work three days in one hospital and then a day at another facility on the weekend.

It's that flexibility that Pettigrew is looking forward to. "The great thing about nursing is you don't have to be bedside nurse," he says. "I can be a teacher, a nurse practitioner or an administrator. I'll be 52 by the time finish, and I'll be able to work in the field another 10 years and still teach after that."

This is the first installment of a new feature that will look at career choices that provide strong job opportunities across the country right now.
Forbes