Registered Nurse job description

$97,550 was the median for registered nurses in May 2025. The tenth percentile came in at $68,940, the ninetieth at $137,470. Nurses assess patients, plan and deliver their care, coordinate the team around them, teach patients and families about a condition, and keep the record straight. About 59 percent of the 3,465,400 registered nurses counted in 2025 work in hospitals, 19 percent in ambulatory healthcare services, and 6 percent in nursing and residential care. Hospital and care facility schedules rotate through nights, weekends, and holidays, often with call attached, while nurses in offices and schools generally keep business hours.

Core Duties and Responsibilities

Recording medical information and vital signs comes first, then giving medications and watching for reactions or side effects, then keeping the record accurate and detailed. Spotting and reporting changes in a patient's condition, and modifying the treatment plan as those changes appear, are the judgment calls the license exists for. Nurses also settle care plans with the physicians and therapists around them, direct less-skilled nursing staff or supervise a unit, monitor diet and activity, conduct specified laboratory tests, and instruct individuals, families, and groups on health education, disease prevention, and childbirth.

Common Skills and Technologies

Every skill this job runs on is a human one: reading a patient, listening, speaking plainly, thinking critically, coordinating everyone around the bed, and wanting the person to get better. The technology list runs long. Epic Systems, MEDITECH, and eClinicalWorks cover the record, Kronos Workforce Timekeeper handles scheduling, and SharePoint, Microsoft Project, Excel, and Access appear wherever a nurse picks up unit administration.

Education, Training, and Career Path

BLS lists a bachelor's degree as the usual entry education, and every nurse holds a state license. Reported credentials are more mixed than that: a little over half hold a bachelor's, about a fifth a certificate earned after high school, and about a fifth an associate degree, with a handful holding a master's or coming in on high school alone. However you arrive, it is several years of preparation and supervised experience before the license. Army 66H Medical Surgical Nurse, a commissioned officer specialty, is the crosswalk entry for registered nursing, and reported titles from charge nurse to oncology and operating room nurse mark where the career goes next.

Sources: O*NET 30.0, 29-1141.00 Registered Nurses, https://www.onetonline.org/link/summary/29-1141.00. BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, 29-1141, https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes291141.htm.