The many roles of a nurse
What is the role of a nurse?
The primary role of a nurse is to be the advocate for the patient who is unwell and to take care of them to the best of your ability.
Nursing offers you to be able to make a big change to somebody's life.
The main advantages of Nursing include job flexibility and career opportunities because there is often more career opportunities than just being a staff nurse as we'll get on to later, so stay tuned for that!
There’s always the opportunity to travel with nursing, as my dad likes to say it's a passport to the world of stability, so it’s amazing for opportunities.
It's a vocational job so you get great fulfilment from helping people every single day.
There is currently over 65 thousand nurses in Ireland at the moment although in recent years there has been many nurses immigrating to places such as Australia for a better work/life balance, although I personally think Ireland is a great place to be a nurse and I certainly would love to be a nurse in Ireland someday.
Working as a nurse in Ireland opens up a whole new world of opportunities. Average salary in nursing
The average salary for nursing is currently, in Ireland, is €38,000 a year.
This is affected by your years of experience, your job role, whereabouts you work; for instance if you work in Dublin you might get paid more than if you work in Limerick or anywhere else but it depends on where you work.
Also if you're in a speciality role you're more likely to get paid higher.
Also if you're in a nurse practitioner role then you are more likely to be on a higher salary than just a staff nurse.
Registration with the NMBI
All nurses and midwives who practice in Ireland by law must be kept on the register which is maintained by the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Ireland, which is known as the NMBI, and each year it is necessary to pay an annual retention fee.
This is known as ARF. It is really important to keep your Irish nursing registration in check.
All nurses and Midwife who practice in Ireland by law are to be kept on the Irish Nursing and Midwifery Council register every year.
You will receive a reminder in the post or by email telling you to renew this if you don't not pay your annual retention fee, your ARF, by 28 days.
After receiving this reminder you will be unable to work as a midwife or nurse in Ireland until you were put back on the register - this is a big consequence for not paying just one hundred euro per year so I recommend everyone to pay that in time so that does not happen.
ARF in 2018 was 100 euros, it does depend on the year how much it costs and also if you are earning more in your job post such as a nurse practitioner then you will have to pay slightly more.
For information on working as a healthcare assistant whilst registering with the NMBI, then read this blog post!
Different types of nursing and healthcare professions in Ireland require different registering bodies in order for you to be able to work - check out all this information in the blog post what sectors require registration and registering bodies.
If you're a healthcare professional that's graduated outside of Ireland, then look at our blog on CORU registration process for non-Irish qualifications.
There are so many opportunities
Many people are unaware the opportunities that nursing can bring. Before I started nursing I was completely unaware of the different roles available to people who trained to be in this.
Of course everyone knows the staff nurse role which is the typical role that most people go to straight after qualifying to give them experience and to gain understanding about the place they're working in.
There's also such roles as the nurse practitioner, which are now called ANP which is advanced nurse practitioner. There also is the CNS which is clinical nurse specialists - these are nurses that specialise in a particular area and they are the expertise in that area.
There's Education roles available for people who want to work in universities and colleges providing education about Nursing and they will go back to university maybe and do more educational degrees.
There's also the opportunity to be student mentors. So for mentors for students who are on placement there's the opportunity to be a mentor to a student.
There's more management roles such as being a sister of a ward or a ward sister, these will be in charge of the wards and more dealing with the managerial side of the role of Nursing and less ward based.
There’s also the chance to be a matron which oversees a few wards and they're kind of the head of the department and liaise with the ward sisters as well.
There's also the nurse prescriber role which can prescribe medicines to patients and they can see patients in clinic settings just like a doctor.
There's many different settings nurses can work in such as hospitals, care homes, nursing home, the community, going to people's homes, the GP, schools, the army and sexual health clinics, just to name few.
'If you like meeting new people then it's a perfect role for you because you're meeting new people every single day of the week and it's a very sociable role.'
About this contributor
Student Nurse and Vlogger
Claire is a student adult nurse from Ireland, but studies in the UK. She makes vlogs for her channel, Claire Quinn - Nursing Secrets, where she shares tips and advice from her own experience as a student nurse.
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