Job profile: Adult nurse

Adult nurses work in hospitals or in the community, nursing sick and injured adults back to health. Each nurse is normally responsible for a number of patients.

What are the typical progression routes?

Job description - Adult Nurse

Adult nurses carry out more routine tasks, such as making beds or giving personal hygiene care. Observing and monitoring patients conditions.The job offers many challenges due to the sheer diversity of situations that they have to be responded to. Nurses will have to deal both with the conditions from which the patient is suffering as well as the needs and anxieties situations may generate.Adult nurses work to help improve healthcare delivery where people struggle to gain access to health care in countries across the world.
 
Activities
  • Writing a care plan
  • Observing and assessing patients progress, in consultation with doctors
  • Checking temperatures, blood pressure and respiration rates
  • Helping doctors with physical examinations
  • Giving drugs, injections, blood transfusions and drips
 
Competencies
  • Get on well with patients of all ages and backgrounds
  • Work well alone and as part of a team
  • Cope with a demanding workload
  • Use tact and patience, and be able to stay calm in a crisis
  • Use computers
 
What are the routes in?
To qualify as an Adult Nurse you will often need a degree or a diploma course, or a postgraduate course if a degree is already completed. The course starts with a year-long Common Foundation Programme, covering the basic principles of nursing. Students then go on to do a specific programme in adult nursing. Other alternative routes are a BTEC in science health including placements in hospital and nursing homes. A three year advanced diploma in nursing studies is also another option.
 
Opportunities are open to candidates with experience leading to nurses taking on a sister or charge nurse role. They may progress to managerial roles, qualify as nurse teachers or undertake research. It is also possible to become a clinical leader and work as a nurse consultant.The number of opportunities for those qualifying in the adult branch of nursing is huge. It is possible to work in hospitals or the community - attached to a health centre or in a nursing home. You will care for, support and educate people of all ages. Once qualified, many nurses take extra courses to specialise in areas such as cancer care, women's health, accident and emergency, critical care, practice nursing, health visiting or school nursing.Registered nurses can take further specialist training to become community or district nurses, practice nurses in GP surgeries, health visitors, prison nurses or occupational health nurses.There are many areas of nursing that will help you fulfil your potential.
 
What is the work like?
Adult nurses may work in hospitals, hospices, and GP surgeries, prisons, in industry or in patients homes. Nurses in hospitals tend to move between different and varied roles. They will work in wards or outpatient clinics, or in special units such as intensive care, operating theatres or accident and emergency.Nurses in the National Health Service (NHS) work 37.5 hours a week. This may include early, late and night shifts. Many NHS employers offer flexible working hours and career breaks.