From Paramedic to Nurse: How to Advance Your Career

Advancing your career as a nurse after training to become and working as a paramedic comes with plenty of benefits, and the transitional path is a relatively natural one.

In becoming a nurse, you open yourself up to greater professional opportunities while still enjoying what attracted you to the industry as a paramedic in the first place. At Health Career Institute, you can easily take the steps necessary to bridge these professions into your new career.

Why Become a Nurse?

What may attract some paramedics to a career as a nurse initially is the opportunity to greatly increase your earning potential. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a registered nurse (RN) can earn up to $73,000 annually. That is a significant increase over the 2015 median annual salary of a paramedic, which was $31,980. While both careers offer some degree of stability, nursing has many facets and ways to work in the field, with the opportunity to specialize and work as a different type of nurse. And as a nurse versus as a paramedic, you may have the opportunity to spend more time with patients on an individual basis, creating strong and valuable relationships with them as you see them through their period of care.

Why Nursing After Emergency Medical Services?

After working as a paramedic, you have a great deal of transferable skills to bring to a nursing career. Your nursing training will build on your paramedic foundations of medicine and patient care, and as you already have interacted with patients, your experiences will be valuable as well. With a background as part of a medical team and in working closely with patients, you will only grow to great new heights with these skills.

At HCI, one of the core courses for a nursing degree is Introduction to Professional Nursing, which specifically focuses on helping professional paramedics grow into the role of a professional nurse. Upon successful completion of a degree program, you will be prepared to sit for the NCLEX board exam to begin practicing as a nurse.