Wound Care Nursing Opportunities

Wound Care Nursing

These days nurses enjoy a wide variety of choice in terms of specialty areas of practice. One of the most exciting specialty areas in which to practice is wound care nursing. Granted, I may be slightly biased! Allow me to convince you of the many advantages of wound care nursing.

Why wound care nursing?

Wound care nursing is not for the faint of heart! As a wound care nurse you will be faced with many challenges, including wounds in places that require you to think outside the box when dressing them, wounds that have failed to heal and require all of your skills to manage them and wounds affected by underlying disease states that complicate healing, such as diabetes and cardiovascular complications. All of these situations require patience, ingenuity, imagination and tenacity. If you possess these attributes, wound care nursing may be right for you.

Opportunities in wound care nursing

Wound care nurses may be employed in many areas. As a wound care nurse, you can work in a hospital, caring for wounds in medical and surgical patients. You may be employed in home care, visiting patients in their home and managing their wounds in conjunction with the patient’s family physician. You may be employed by a nursing home, caring for the wound care needs of elderly residents. The opportunities are virtually endless and are certain to grow as the population ages.

As a certified wound care nurse, you can command a higher salary on average, depending on where you work. In addition, becoming certified puts you ahead of your colleagues and helps you to stand out when it comes time for a promotion. Wound care expertise is a highly prized commodity, given that people are living longer with comorbidities that put them at high risk of developing a wound.

Wound care nursing benefits all types of nurses

It doesn’t matter whether you are a CNA or MA, LPN/LVN, RN, BSN or nurse practitioner (NP) – nurses at any level can benefit from wound care certification and education.  Nurses of all levels can enroll in one of  WoundEducator.com’s wound care certification courses. Nurses meeting the criteria may then choose to take the wound certification examination to become a certified wound care professional. There are numerous wound certifications available, each of which have specific licensing and academic requirements. Sound confusing? It needn’t be- we’ve simplified matters by creating a wound certification for nurses comparison chart.

If you are looking for a challenge and like the idea of specializing in an area that provides constant challenge and immense personal and professional satisfaction, wound care nursing may be right for you!