A re you looking for more information about the nursing field or even about a branch within healthcare in general? Do you want to know more about the college application process or need some help finding the right educational fit for you? Do you want a quick way to search for a good college or school? Try these resources as a starting point on your journey toward finding a great career!
Books
Cunningham, Kevin. Nurse. 21st Century Skills Library: Cool Steam Careers. Ann Arbor, MI: Cherry Lake, 2015.
Field, Shelly. Career Opportunities in Health Care, 3rd ed. New York: Checkmark Books, 2007.
Fiske, Edward. Fiske Guide to Colleges. Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks, 2018.
Gresham, Barbara B. Todays Health Professions: Working Together to Provide Quality Care. Philadelphia: F.A. Davis, 2016.
Muchnick, Justin Ross. Teens Guide to College & Career Planning, 12th ed. Lawrenceville, NJ: Petersons, 2015.
Princeton Review. The Best 382 Colleges, 2018 Edition: Everything You Need toMake the Right College Choice. New York: Princeton Review, 2018.
Websites
Accrediting Bureau of Health Education Schools
www.abhes.org
This accrediting agency is recognized by the US Department of Education and by the Council for Higher Education Accreditation. The website includes a list of accredited institutions and programs, a calendar of upcoming events, a special tab for students, a section on recent publications, and much more.
Accreditation Commission for Education in Nursing
www.acenursing.us
The ACEN accredits nursing programs at the associate, diploma, baccalaureate, and graduate levels. Visit the website for a full list of accredited programs in your area.
American Association of Colleges of Nursing
www.aacnnursing.org
The AACN calls itself the national voice for academic nursing. Its stated purpose is to work to establish quality standards for nursing education. That includes assisting schools in implementing the standards, influencing the nursing profession to improve healthcare, and promoting public support for professional nursing education, research, and practice.
American Gap Year Association
www.gapyearassociation.org
The American Gap Year Associations mission is making transformative gap years an accessible option for all high school graduates. A gap year is a year taken between high school and college to travel, teach, work, volunteer, generally mature, and otherwise experience the world. The website has lots of advice and resources for anyone considering taking a gap year.
American Nurses Association
www.nursingworld.org
The goal of the ANA is to improve patient care through supporting individuals and organizations to advance the nursing profession. From advocating in the halls of Congress, to setting the bar for credentialing worldwide, the ANA Enterprise exists to give every nurse the best chance of success. The website contains information about nursing certifications, credentialing programs, and nursing practice and policy standards.
The Balance
www.thebalance.com
This site is all about managing money and finances, but it also has a large section called Careers, which provides advice for writing rsums and cover letters, interviewing, and more. Search teens on the site and you will find teen-specific advice and tips.
The College Board
www.collegeboard.org
The College Board tracks and summarizes financial data from colleges and universities all over the United States. This well-organized site can be your one-stop shop for all things college research. It contains lots of advice and information about taking and doing well on the SAT and ACT, many articles on college planning, a robust college search feature, a scholarship search feature, and a major and career search area. You can type your career of interest (for example, registered nurse) into the search box and get back an overview page that describes the career, gives advice on how to prepare for it, suggests where to get experience, identifies characteristics you should have to excel in this career, lists helpful classes to take while in high school, and provides lots of links to more information.
CollegeGrad Career Profiles
www.collegegrad.com/careers
Although this site is primarily geared toward college graduates, the career profiles area has a list of links to nearly every career you could ever think of. A single click takes you to a very detailed, helpful section that describes the job in detail, explains the educational requirements, includes links to good colleges that offer training in this career and to actual open jobs and internships, describes the licensing requirements (if any), lists salaries, and much more.
Commission on Accreditation of Allied Health Education Programs
www.caahep.org
CAAHEP is one of the largest programmatic accreditors in the health sciences field. The website enables you to easily search through a large collection of accredited programs. It also includes a specific section just for students and a news and events section.
Explore Health Careers
www.explorehealthcareers.org
As the title suggests, this site enables you to explore careers in the health fields. You can seek answers to questions such as whether a career in health is for you, find the right fit and focus your search within the many fields, actually find the job or internship youre looking for, learn more about paying for college, and more.
Kahn Academy
www.khanacademy.org
The Kahn Academy website is an impressive collection of articles, courses, and videos about many educational topics in math, science, and the humanities. You can search any topic or subject (by subject matter and grade) and read lessons, take courses, and watch videos to learn all about it. The site includes test prep information for the SAT, ACT, AP, GMAT, and other standardized tests. There is also a college admissions section with lots of good articles and information, provided in the approachable Kahn style.
Live Career
www.livecareer.com
This site has an impressive number of resources directed toward teens for writing rsums and cover letters and preparing for interviews.
Mapping Your Future
www.mappingyourfuture.org
This site helps young people figure out what they want to do and maps out how to reach career goals. It includes helpful tips on rsum writing, job hunting, job interviewing, and more.
Monster
www.monster.com
This is perhaps the most well-known and certainly one of the largest employment websites in the United States. You fill in a couple of search boxes and away you go. You can sort by job title, of course, as well as by company name, location, salary range, experience range, and much more. The site also includes information about career fairs, advice on rsums and interviews, and more.
National Council of State Boards of Nursing
www.ncsbn.org
The NCSBN empowers and supports nursing regulators in their mandate to protect the public. One of the councils primary functions is to develop and oversee the National Council Licensure Examination (NCLEX), an exam for nurse licensure in the United States and Canada. There are two versions of this exam: the NCLEX-RN (registered nursing) and the NCLEX-PN (practical nursing). All nurses must sit for and pass one of the two exams, depending on their role, in order to practice nursing in the United States and Canada.