Nursing

The first person to notice a patient in intensive care getting worse is usually the nurse.

Staying calm when everything is urgent comes naturally, and you are exact with numbers, because doses depend on them. You can keep paying attention in the eleventh hour of a shift and steady a frightened parent as you work.

Shifts on a ward, in intensive care or in an operating theatre: observing, giving medicines, recording everything and doing hands-on care, with emergencies breaking in. Community nurses work outside the hospital — villages, schools, homes — running immunisation and antenatal care.

Intensive care is where burnout is highest — and the experience that most improves a nursing career, in Indian corporate hospitals and abroad. Plan on the four-year B.Sc Nursing, with PUC Biology: the GNM diploma is being phased out, government colleges admit through NEET UG, and many private colleges use their own test.

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Go deeper — Inside the Courses: Critical Care Nursing · Paediatric Nursing · Psychiatric Nursing · Community Health Nursing · Operation Theatre Nursing