What is the future of nursing careers? Predictions are that in 10 or 20 years, it will look nothing like it does today! With new technologies and drugs, changes in insurance and health care policies, and the shortage in nurses, the profession will have to reinvest itself. Many nursing functions will be automated. For example, documentation and updating patient records, smart beds to monitor vital signs, bar codes, and automatic medicine carts could reduce the time and errors in dispensing medications, and voice-activated technology would eliminate the need to constantly write things down. Other nursing task such as serving meals will be taken over by aides. This would give nurses more time to provide a human touch to their patients.

As a result of nursing shortages, healthcare facilities will be forced to use their nurses judiciously. Nurses will spend more time at the bedside as educators and care coordinators to refocus on the patient. With the lengths of patient stays shortening, nurses will have to make the best use of a shrinking amount of time hospital stays. Nurses will also spend more time in administration and supervision positions. They will need to know how to access knowledge and transfer it to the patient and their loved ones.

Advancements in technology will also likely attract more males and minorities into the nursing profession. Thus, more emphasis would have to be put on supporting teaching careers and recruiting instructors from a diversity of cultural and educational backgrounds to cater to this shift, and to relive the shortage of nursing school instructors. In addition, more loans and financial scholarships at the graduate level (masters and Phd) will have to be increase to encourage more trained medical professionals to serve as teaching staff. In addition nursing colleges would have to be willing to pay the instructors higher salaries to attract and retain teaching staff.

As healthcare trends stand today, it is safe to assume that if the the nursing shortage persists, long-term stays and hospital admissions may have to be reserved for the patients that need it most. Thus, the number of outpatients will likely increases as will the need for more home-healthcare nursing professionals. It is also conceivable that nurses will play a larger role in insurance agencies, health consulting firms, and healthcare technology and software development companies. Nurses will also be involved more deeply with community health and population-based health work. Their responsibilities will include identifying health risks and setting up healthcare priorities for populations at higher risk. Healthcare professionals will also be involved in community education, and working with healthcare institutions and insurance agencies to develop healthcare programs that are designed to promote health and save costs for both the patients and their healthcare providers.

Nurse practitioners have a foreseeable bright future in geriatrics and gerontology. As the baby boom generation gets closer to retirement age, nurses will find themselves in new roles. For those medical professionals who are not ready to retire, they may find themselves in consulting roles for as example health care providers in retirement homes, because they themselves would have a good understanding of the needs of this generation

As technology and research progresses, nurses would focus more on preventing the illnesses rather than treatment. Also, drugs designed for healthcare that targets diseases before they start, and identifying risks for those diseases will enhance preventive care. This means that people are going to have to learn to take care of themselves more. The nursing shortage and rising health care costs will also put pressure on the health care system to change from an illness model to a wellness and prevention model.

Therefore, no matter what the future holds, nurses will have be prepared to keep learning, growing, and expanding and changing alongside the transformative role of the healthcare profession. That obviously comes easier when one is passionate about the career.