Nurse

Nurses are more than sidekicks in scrubs; they’re the front lines of health and wellness. If the Doctor’s the head; they’re the hands. If the Doctor’s the mountain, they’re the climber. And if the Doctor’s the table? You got it: They’re the legs.

Indeed, your job as a Nurse isn’t studying health care; it’s delivering it. Although Doctors typically do the diagnosing, you do the doing. You treat patients by performing the nuts and bolts of health care.

Those nuts and bolts — the minutiae of medicine — include interfacing with patients and asking about their symptoms, keeping written records, checking vital signs, drawing blood, dressing wounds, giving diagnostic tests, administering medications, and instructing patients and their families about how to follow Doctors’ orders. If you have special training, you might even prescribe medicine, or help deliver babies.

What you do depends on the type of nurse you are. Because they have more education, Registered Nurses, or RNs, are most likely to administer direct patient care. Licensed Vocational Nurses, on the other hand — LVNs — typically do tasks like observing patients, washing and cleaning them, and changing their bed linens.

Your duties also depend on your specialty, which might be caring for children, for instance, or the elderly. Similarly, you might specialize in a specific area of a hospital, like ER Nurses or OR Nurses.

No matter what type of Nurse you are, however, you take pride in your job, which even at its most complicated is this simple: You help people when they’re sick — physically and emotionally.