IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN NURSING as a career and have been learning about this wonderful profession, you may have come across the term "Nurse Practitioner." This is an advanced level of nursing that has been around for a relatively short period of time, since 1965. It requires additional education, training and certification beyond what you need in order to become a registered nurse (RN). In fact, the usual education track toward becoming a nurse practitioner is to first become an RN. Although there are many tasks that both NPs and RNs perform, there are significant differences. When you achieve your nurse practitioner certification, you can do things that registered nurses are not trained to do, notably prescribing and managing medications and other therapies, and referring patients to other health professionals. The training for nurse practitioners is similar in many ways to the training that doctors receive. Both learn how to diagnose health problems, determine the appropriate treatment and then administer that treatment. Like doctors, many nurse practitioners specialize, working with a specific age group - children, adults, or seniors - or in a particular area of medicine, such as oncology, psychiatry, or gastrointestinal. Training and practice of NPs focus on prevention and wellness maintenance, and they generally are considered to take a more "holistic" approach than do doctors do. Nurse practitioners are sometimes confused with physician assistants (PAs) because they often perform similar tasks such as taking patient histories, conducting diagnostic tests, assisting in surgical procedures, and offering counseling and health education to patients. PAs receive national certification and may hold bachelor's or even master's degrees. But as with registered nurses, there is a critical difference - PAs must work under the supervision of a physician, while nurse practitioners can, in many instances, work independently of a doctor. Many NPs operate their own practices without the presence of a supervising physician. This is currently the case in more than a dozen states, and more states are permitting this each year. The demand for primary care health services is growing, and there are simply not enough family doctors to fill the need, nor are there expected to be enough for many years to come. This is especially true in rural America, as well as in the poorer sections of urban America. This new Careers Ebook contains a wealth of unbiased information about an occupational field, based on the latest national surveys. Careers Ebooks cover attractive and unattractive sides, opportunities, education necessary, personal qualifications required, earnings, descriptions of different job specialties, first person accounts by those in the field, and how to get started; including practical advice on what to do now. There are live links to schools and colleges, associations, periodicals and other sources of reliable information.