Nurse Practitioner job description
1,489 verified openings in Physicians & Advanced Practice
Nurse practitioners carry their own panel of patients, diagnosing and treating acute, chronic, and episodic illness, ordering and reading lab work and x-rays, and prescribing in most states. The national median was $132,300 in May 2025; the bottom tenth of the profession came in under $101,340 and the top tenth over $174,420. The demand is unusual: BLS projects the occupation growing from 336,300 jobs in 2025 to 474,100 by 2035, a 41 percent climb against the 3 percent expected across all occupations.
Core Duties and Responsibilities
Most NPs work a defined population, such as adult and geriatric health, pediatrics, or psychiatric and mental health, and handle the whole clinical arc inside it. The work is histories and physical exams, diagnoses assembled from symptoms and test results, treatment plans built on professional practice guidelines, prescriptions weighed for efficacy, safety, and cost, and a complete record of the plan and the prognosis. Complex, unstable, or comorbid cases are managed with other providers in the loop, and watching for adverse drug reactions in infants, older adults, and pregnant patients is standing work. Offices of physicians employ 46 percent of the advanced practice nursing group and hospitals 25 percent, and hospital jobs add shift and on-call rotation.
Common Skills and Technologies
Reading comprehension, active listening, critical thinking, and complex problem solving are the four this work leans on hardest, with writing behind them because maintaining the record is the task NPs themselves rank above every other. Postings usually name the chart system the practice runs on, most often Epic Systems or eClinicalWorks EHR. Microsoft Access and SharePoint turn up where a practice keeps its own registries and protocols.
Education, Training, and Career Path
The credential stacks in order: an RN license, a graduate degree in the nurse practitioner role, a national certification exam, and a state APRN license. Graduate programs generally prefer a bachelor's in nursing, though bridge programs take RNs holding an associate degree or a diploma. Among practicing NPs, 65 percent name a master's as their highest degree and 26 percent a doctorate, and the remaining few points are a bachelor's or post-doctoral training. That is what O*NET's top band, Job Zone Five, means in practice. Across the advanced practice group, outpatient care centers pay the strongest industry median at $143,370, just ahead of hospitals at $142,240.
Sources: O*NET 30.0, 29-1171.00 Nurse Practitioners, https://www.onetonline.org/link/summary/29-1171.00. BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, 29-1171, https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes291171.htm. BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, https://www.bls.gov/ooh/healthcare/nurse-anesthetists-nurse-midwives-and-nurse-practitioners.htm.