Are you an experienced nurse looking for a new challenge? With an everchanging landscape in health care, there are plenty of new career opportunities available in nursing today.

“Although nurses historically have provided handson patient care at the bedside, and will continue to do so, nurses also are deeply involved in health education, research, business and public policy,” said Barbara Blakeney, MS, RN, president of the American Nurses Association. “There are [also] more and more opportunities for nurses to work in community settings such as schools, workplaces and clinics.”

According to the ANA, there are an estimated 2.7 million registered nurses in the United States. A government report indicates a current shortage of 150,000 RNs in the United States with projections pointing to a shortage of more than 800,000 RNs by the year 2020.

To address the shortage of nurses, health care employers are working not only to recruit new people into the field but to retain those already in it.

“For nurses who are looking for different challenges or opportunities to pick up new skills, providing a way for them to change specialties is a wonderful way to retain them in the work force and in particular, in hospitals,” said Pam Thompson, CEO of the American Organization of Nurse Executives.

“That’s why so many hospitals have created formal learning plans and programs to facilitate their nurses making such changes.”

Retention efforts by hospitals also are focusing on ways to accommodate the changing needs and goals of older nurses.

“We have a large number of nurses in their 40s and, in the past, nurses traditionally retired in their early to mid-50s,” Thompson said. “Today, however, we have a large cohort of baby boomer nurses who are highly educated, accustomed to challenging careers and who are expecting to live longer lives. Many are rethinking whether or not, from both a financial and intellectual perspective, they want to be retired for 30 or more years.”

“That’s why hospitals are looking at a greater variety of opportunities for older nurses to accommodate their desire for roles that are less physically demanding but which capitalize on their experience and vast reservoir of knowledge.”

For nurses who prefer management duties to direct patient care, opportunities to climb the management ladder are excellent.

“Someone might begin by managing an eight- to 12-hour shift. Then they might become an assistant manager or manager of a nursing unit. Once they do well in those roles, they could advance to a director’s role, where they are responsible for managing multiple nursing units,” Thompson explained. “They might continue advancing and become a chief nursing officer, in charge of all nursing units, or even become a vice president of patient care, which means several departments, in addition to nursing, are under their responsibility.”

Advancement into management and executive roles exists in other settings, such as long-term care, as well.

Seasoned nursing professionals who want to teach the next generation of RNs can find a growing number of opportunities to do so. Outreach efforts that stressed the nation’s need for more nurses have paid off with increased nursing school enrollments.

The problem is having adequate faculty to accommodate all qualified applicants.

“The nursing faculty shortage is stimulating some creative partnerships between hospitals and academic institutions,” Thompson said. “We have hospitals loaning master’s-prepared nurses to academic institutions to teach. Some universities require their faculty to have joint appointments where they have both clinical and teaching responsibilities.”