Highest Paying Nursing Jobs - Top Three Advanced Nursing Specializations

Being a nurse can be very taxing and stressful, which is no less a demanding job compared to doctors and physicians. Working in a hospital environment means you have to perform shift duties, which can be disruptive to your personal and family life. Altogether, nursing is actually quite an unpopular career option which is why many states in America such as Florida, California, Washington etc are now facing an extreme shortage of nursing workers. This is also reflected in other countries such as Canada and UK, where large number of foreign nurses from Asia countries were employed.

Due to manpower shortage in the nursing field, the average salary for nurses across the board has been paid improved greatly to attract more people to join the nursing profession. The guaranteed rate of finding a nursing job for newly graduates with zero or less than a year of experience is actually very high.

Advancement to higher paying jobs is well defined by taking a nursing degree and becoming a registered nurse, followed by graduate degree programs such as a Masters of Science in Nursing and advanced certification such as the ANCC Certified Specialty Nurse and ANCC Certified Advance Nurse Awards. To start earning more than $100,000 in your nursing career, you need to start at the entry level positions to gain a few years of experience before going back to nursing school for higher education.

Qualify for the Best Paying Nursing Careers

To qualify for the best high paying nursing jobs, you will need higher education, more years of working experience and attend more training courses compared to other types of nursing roles. Generally, many registered nurses stopped pursuing further education after their nursing degree. If you are interested to reach the top of the nursing hierarchy, you can choose to progress to management and supervisory levels or take the specialist nurse career path in advanced practice or clinical practice nursing by attaining the relevant certifications.

The top three highest paying nursing jobs and how to get them are as follows:

Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist (CRNA)
A certified registered nurse anesthetist earns an average of $100,000 per year and increases with your level of experience. Nurse anesthetists are among the highest paid in the healthcare field. To become a CRNA, you need to first become a registered nurse and then finish a graduate degree program and pass an examination to be a licensed nurse anesthetist.

The main responsibilities of a nurse anesthetist is to work with the surgery anesthesiologist and provide anesthesia treatment during surgeries. This is an ideal advanced nursing career option if you are more interested in the technical aspects of a surgery compared to patient interaction and providing care and nursing duties. This is because the patients you are in contact with will be largely unconscious.

Nurse Practitioner (NP)
A nurse practitioner's job scope involves the administration of mid-level patient care and procedures under the close supervision of a physician. Nurse practitioners have undergone rigorous training and certification before they are authorized to do minor procedures and prescribe medications. There are many specialties options available for nurse practitioners, including Acute Care NP, Adult Psychiatric & Mental Health NP, Advanced Diabetes Management NP, Gerontological NP, Pediatric NP etc.

The average salaries of nurse practitioners vary for each state but is generally similar to CRNAs. You can expect an average pay of $90,000 upon attaining state licensing for nurse practitioners. Some states authorizes NPs to practice independently without the supervision of physicians, and hence people skills are quite important if you intend to choose this career path. You must be able to enjoy working with patients and build long term relationships while caring for these patients. If you can meet these intangible requirements, becoming a nurse practitioner is quite a highly paid health care job.

Clinical Nurse Specialist (CNS)
A clinical nurse specialist plays an advisory role in specialized clinical research in the particular health care area of interest (cardiology, psychiatry etc) and many take on higher managerial positions. The academic requirements include Master's of Science degrees in Nursing and the required licensing and certification for Clinical Nurse Specialist. Patient interaction is minimal for such nurses while the work scope is heavily oriented towards scholarly research, gathering and analysis of clinical data, publishing of academic papers. The average salary for an CNS with experience is between $70,000 to $90,000 a year.