Registered Nurse
You look after several patients at once, and you are the one who notices first when one of them changes. You give their medicines, tell the doctor what you see, and teach their families what to do at home.
Related: Physician
The day in the life
Bed 12 · Ruth Abernathy, 74
New hip two days ago, home tomorrow
- •a little confused at 3 this morning
- •Tylenol for pain: every 8 hours, the doctor’s order
- •her daughter Tess is here all day
from the night nurse, at 7
Before 10 there is more to do than one person can do. Marco, the nursing assistant, can do any of it. What do you keep for yourself?
Try a day as a registered nurse
A short, playful taste of the real work.
Growing faster than most jobs, with about 180,800 openings a year.
A four year degree in nursing or an associate’s degree in nursing, and then the same licensing exam either way.
What you’d do all day
The picture is somebody kind holding a hand. That is part of it. Most of the job is watching: checking patients, writing down what you see, giving medicines and watching for what they do. Almost every nurse talks to people face to face every day, and almost every one is on the phone every day too.
What stays yours is the judgment: whose care you hand to an assistant and whose you keep, when a change in a patient is worth calling the doctor about, and what a family has to leave knowing. More than half of nurses say a mistake in their job is extremely serious, and about half say they have a lot of freedom to decide.
- Caring for patients35%
- Writing it down25%
- Medicines20%
- Talking with the team12%
- Teaching families8%
Most of the shift is with your patients: checking them, helping them, giving their medicines, and writing every bit of it down.
Most nurses work in one of three places.
- Hospitalsabout six in ten nurses. You look after patients on a ward, in the emergency department, in surgery or with newborns, on shifts round the clock.
- Doctors’ offices and clinicsabout two in ten. You see patients who come in for the day, and you keep more regular hours.
- Nursing homesyou look after older people who live there, often for months or years.
A typical early-career day
- 7:00Handover
The nurse going home tells you about each of your patients. You write down anything that has changed overnight.
- 8:00Seeing everybody
You check on each patient yourself, and decide which jobs the nursing assistant can take.
- 9:00Medicines
You check every medicine against the doctor’s order before you give it, and watch for how each patient takes it.
- 12:00A patient changes
One patient’s heart rate is up and she seems confused. You call the doctor and say what you see.
- 5:00Going home
A patient goes home tomorrow. You teach her family what to watch for, and have them say it back.
A rough day for somebody a year or two into a hospital ward. Hospitals need nurses round the clock, so the same day can start in the evening, on a weekend or on a holiday.
The outlook
Where it’s going
Nursing grows about 6% by 2035, faster than most jobs, and about 180,800 nursing jobs open up every year.
Right now
The harder part is getting a place to study it. Nursing schools turned away 93,176 qualified applications in 2025.
Would you like it?
Worth a look if you would rather notice something is wrong and say so than wait to be sure.
Tap any that sound like you.
In practice, people realize it’s their thing when…
…and it probably isn’t their thing when
How people get in
- 4
- Years it takes on average
- $48K
- Average cost
- 87 in 100
- Pass the exam on the first try
Every way in
A four year degree in nursing
About half of first-time test takers
Four years · About $48K for the degree
An associate’s degree in nursing
About half of first-time test takers
Often about four years, counting the classes before it · $4,150 a year at a community college
How your first job gets decided
The exam is not the hard part: most people pass it the first time. The hard part is a place on a nursing program. Schools turned away 93,176 qualified applications in 2025.
What employers check
- A nursing degree: four years for a bachelor’s, and BLS says the associate’s also typically takes about four once you count the classes before it.
- The licensing exam, the NCLEX: 85 to 150 questions in up to five hours. About 53 in 100 people who sit it again pass.
- A license from your state. In 43 states and territories that share one, it lets you work in all of them.
Most first jobs are on a hospital ward, straight after the exam.
- Nursing schools report that 25% of hospitals near them require a four year degree for new nurses, and 69.8% strongly prefer one.
- A nursing degree earns about $75,100 a year after you finish.
- If you already have a degree in something else, a fast-track nursing degree takes 12 to 18 months.
When to apply
Two things set the calendar: the application to the program, and the exam at the end.
- Partway through collegeAt many colleges you apply to the nursing program itself after your first classes, with no promise of a place.
- Your last yearLong shifts on real hospital wards, with a nurse watching.
- After you graduateBook the licensing exam and sit it. You find out pass or fail, never a score.
How long it takes
A nursing degree
About four years
The exam
Up to five hours
A license
From your state
About four years to the license, either way in.
About four years to the license, and the first job usually follows straight after. You can try the teaching part this week: teach one real person what to do in an emergency, and find out if they got it.
Try teaching someone what to doTeach Someone What to Do, and Check They Got It
Pick one emergency somebody near you should know how to handle, like spotting a stroke. Learn it from a page doctors and nurses trust, cut it to one page, teach it to a real person, and have them say it back without the page.
Where these numbers come from
Written by the Sidequest team, from the sources below.
- Pay: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, Registered Nurses (SOC 29-1141), May 2025 wages, read through the BLS public data API. Pay one year after finishing: U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard, field of study data, CIP 51.38 Registered Nursing, June 2026 release. Dated October 2026.
- The outlook: BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, Registered Nurses (outlook 2025-35), page last modified August 27 2026, for openings, growth, where nurses work and their hours; O*NET OnLine 29-1141.00 Registered Nurses, site updated October 6 2026, for talking face to face and on the phone, mistakes, freedom to decide, illness and angry people; American Association of Colleges of Nursing, enrollment release of May 7 2026, for the 93,176 qualified applications turned away. Dated October 2026.
- Getting in: BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, Registered Nurses, How to Become One, read October 11 2026, for the three ways in and how long each typically takes. National Council of State Boards of Nursing, 2025 NCLEX Examination Statistics, June 2026, for the first try pass rates of 87.6 and 86.1 percent and the 52.7 percent second try; the NCLEX-RN Test Plan, effective April 2026, for 85 to 150 questions in five hours. American Association of Colleges of Nursing, Research Brief, October 2023, for the 25 percent of employers who require a four year degree and the 69.8 percent who strongly prefer one; its accelerated programs fact sheet, July 2026, for 12 to 18 months. Nurse Licensure Compact, nursecompact.com, read October 2026, for 43 jurisdictions. College Board, Trends in College Pricing and Student Aid 2025, for $11,950 a year at a public four year college in state and $4,150 at a public two year college. Dated October 2026.