What Can You Do With A DNP?

• Nurse Practitioner

  The largest of the advanced-practice roles and the destination most people researching a doctorate have in mind.

  A master’s qualifies you and the profession says so itself. The doctorate opens rooms rather than raising the rate for the same job.

• Nurse Anesthetist

  The one advanced-practice role where the doctorate is compulsory rather than optional.

  Also the hardest to enter: CRNA programs want critical-care experience before they will look at you.

• Nurse Midwife

  A distinct scope with its own accreditor and its own certifying board, paid at nurse-practitioner rates.

  A master’s qualifies you. The doctorate earns its place here only if faculty or service leadership is the destination.

• Nurse Educator

  Teaching, clinical supervision and curriculum, in a field short thousands of faculty.

  The one role here where the wage data argues against the degree: faculty earn less at the median than staff nurses.

• Chief Nursing Officer

  Executive accountability for nursing across an organization. Budgets, boards and workforce, not patients.

  The strongest case for a DNP on this site, and still not a substitute for a decade of management experience.

• Clinical Nurse Specialist

  The least understood of the four advanced practice roles, and the one whose job description changes most between employers. It is also the only one whose work is aimed at the unit as much as at the patient.

  Counted by BLS inside registered nurses rather than as an occupation of its own.

• Public Health Nurse

  The one nursing role on this site where the person in front of you is not the point. It pays below hospital nursing, it is chronically underfunded, and the people who do it tend to stay.

  Counted by BLS inside registered nurses rather than as an occupation of its own.

• Acute Care Nurse Practitioner

  The hospital half of nurse practice, and the population focus people most often discover they picked wrong. A family certification does not qualify you for this work, and finding that out after graduating is expensive.

  Counted by BLS inside nurse practitioners rather than as an occupation of its own.

• Nursing Informatics

  The clearest exit from bedside nursing that does not involve leaving healthcare, and the one role here whose own credential asks for nothing beyond a bachelor’s.

  Counted by BLS inside medical and health services managers rather than as an occupation of its own.

• Nurse Manager

  The step where nursing stops being about your own practice and starts being about everyone else’s. It is the most common leadership post in the profession and the one people are least prepared for.

  Counted by BLS inside medical and health services managers rather than as an occupation of its own.

Each role pairs with a wage page: what these occupations are paid, from the federal survey. What the degree is and what it requires is in the guides.