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Have you ever given a thought to starting up a career in health care industry or, probably, giving it a new boost in case you happen to be a practicing professional in that field? In such a case it might well be worthwhile to try out some reputable and well-known online nursing degree training program? How about that? You see, the thing is that nowadays more and more traditional colleges and universities are offering online counterparts of their degrees in nursing! More than that, according to all the projections and expectations of the employment market experts the demand for people with degree in nursing is going to demonstrate amazing growth in the short-, mid- and even long-term perspective, not to mentioned that such demand is today much higher than ever before. Nursing specialization has become a truly hot one at the employment market. You might have never heard about it but the nursing specialization itself has an interesting and colorful history. Its beginning could be traced back to the time of Jesus, and since those ancient times nursing has been recognized in the honorable manner, though, possibly, not all the time in the same way that we see it nowadays. It were the residents of the religious establishments, such as monks at the monasteries that initially became known as professionally responsible for taking care of and comforting the sick and injured. There was a period of time in the history of nursing when this noble responsibility was actually assigned to law offenders, in this way nursing became a kind of a "community service" sentence. In the mid 1800's the first nursing school was established by the famous Florence Nightingale. She played the critical role in the process of legitimization of the nursing position inside the healthcare industry, making it a recognized professional specialization, not inferior to other healthcare lines of professional activities. Besides carrying out physicians orders nurses became responsible for the general care of their patients and were authorized to do certain decision making in case the treating physician happened to be absent. All those developments called for a specialized professional education of the nurses, since in the present day’s health care environment the nursing function can be trusted only to the very well-trained and highly-qualified persons with at least a certificate, to say nothing about a degree in nursing. You may wonder what makes nurses to be in such a hot demand today. Well, the reason for this has been determined by several factors, the most influential among them is the fact that the baby-boomers generation is aging and the demand for all kinds of health-care procedures and specialists continue to grow at an ever increasing rate. The modern nursing specialists can enjoy a very wide range of choices when they consider taking up this or that degree program or specialization. Another factor to determine the booming popularity of this healthcare specialization has become the advent of the online nursing degree training, which became possible after the introduction of affordable personal computing hardware and broadband internet access, which are today easily accessible for practically any person interested in them. With online education that does not know any geographical limitations and features amazing flexibility of scheduling, all kinds of nursing degrees and specializations have become one of the most attractive career choices for both high school graduates and those already employed in healthcare or some other industry. The range of the offered programs covers the same range as the traditional off-line nursing training could offer to potential students. Everything will depend on your own career objectives and goals and on how far you might be whishing to go in the nursing segment of the healthcare industry. One year of training can get you a status of the Licensed Practical Nurses (LPN). This is considered one of the fist initial steps (not considering a CNA, which is a shortened designation of Certified Nursing Assistant) or you might want to take on your way up to the Registered Nurse (RN), the Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN), the Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) or even the MBA in Healthcare Administration. We did not mention in this list such specialization as Nurse Practitioner (NP), which also offers very promising and self-fulfilling employment options to be considered carefully. Surely, when the online education was making just the first steps the range of the offered degrees was not so wide and comprehensive, and it was most of the time limited to only post degree education. But today the online nursing degree training has made impressive progress and practically all well-known online schools, especially those developed by their off-line counterparts, are offering all levels of nursing degrees online. Before making your choice of the online nursing degree to join you should give some consideration to the following points. In the first place you should know that there are online courses of accredited and non-accredited kind. One thing to look at with any online degree program is the type of "distance learning" or teaching model the program uses. The accredited courses have been inspected and examined by specially appointed supervisory bodies for their corresponding to state and national regulations in the field of vocational healthcare training and found satisfactory. The accredited status guarantees the high standards of training and the validation of your certificate or diploma with any possible future employer. So, in order not to waste you time and money you should deal only with accredited programs and stay away from all the rest, or you will be sorry in the end. Secondly, you should be aware that the online nursing degree training programs are typically divided into two major types of online learning. The first type, sometimes called synchronous, requires from the online students to follow an actual on - campus class schedule, and in this respect they lack one of the biggest assets of the online distance education – the flexibility of the scheduling and possibility for an online student to progress at a convenient, self - adjusted pace. The training programs of the second type are of so called asynchronous nature. As you can easily guess, the programs of asynchronous types do not require from a student to follow some fixed schedule, they offer much more flexibility. The students are free to log-in at a convenient time, just accumulating only a minimum number of hours per week. Surely, the assignments and homework still have dead lines to be submitted, but within the limits of those dead lines the students are free to structure their time as they see it convenient and efficient. If you happen to be a working person or you are unable, for some reason, to attend classes at a specific, pre-scheduled time, you should look for the online degree program of the second, asynchronous type, surely. In the modern-day environment of the health care industry, with its intensive competition and new challenges, a degree in nursing will surely become a winning advantage for you, leading to a successful promotion of your career in the nursing field. Taking into account the growing demand for all kinds of professional nursing specialists, especially those with a degree, which, by the way, is expected to be increasing over the next decade, it would be a very wise investment into your future career success if you apply for admission to a reputable accredited online degree program in nursing. Do some online research, look into what is offered along this line and apply for admission. Do not forget to use some tips we have elaborated on in this short, but, hopefully, comprehensive and helpful article. online nursing degree
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