What does a Registered Nurse do?

Registered Nurse

Registered nurses assess, plan and deliver care for patients — in hospitals, GP surgeries, community settings, mental health services, care homes and increasingly in people's own homes. Day to day this means monitoring how someone's condition is changing, giving medicines and treatments, carrying out clinical procedures, and coordinating with doctors, therapists, pharmacists and families so that care actually happens. To use the title "registered nurse" in the UK you must be on the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) register, which requires an approved nursing qualification — it is a licensed profession, not a job you can enter with any degree.

Starting salary: Varies, see below
Live graduate jobs: 1 open now
Main way in: The standard route
They usually ask for: An NMC-approved nursing programme

Approximate graduate salary

Newly registered nurses in the NHS start on Band 5 of the Agenda for Change pay scale — very roughly in the high twenties to around thirty thousand pounds to start, plus additional payments for working in and around London and enhancements for nights, weekends and bank holidays. Private sector, care home and agency pay varies considerably and can be higher or lower. Pay scales are set nationally and reviewed annually, and differ somewhat between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, so check the current published scale rather than relying on an approximation.

What you'd actually do

Taking and interpreting observations — blood pressure, pulse, temperature, oxygen levels, breathing rate — and escalating when a scoring system (such as a national early warning score) suggests a patient is deteriorating
Preparing and administering medication, including checking doses and interactions, giving injections and managing intravenous (IV) infusions, and documenting every dose
Carrying out clinical procedures appropriate to the setting: wound dressings, catheter care, cannulation (inserting a small tube into a vein), taking bloods, managing feeding tubes
Writing and updating care records and care plans, mostly on electronic systems — documentation takes up far more of the shift than most people expect, and is what protects both the patient and the nurse

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Handover: receiving and giving a structured verbal summary of every patient at the start and end of a shift, which is where most errors are caught or created
Talking to patients and relatives — explaining what is happening, breaking difficult news alongside medical colleagues, calming distress, and in mental health settings, doing therapeutic work and risk assessment as the core of the job rather than a side task
Supervising and directing healthcare assistants and student nurses, and coordinating with doctors, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, social workers and discharge teams to get someone home safely

How graduates get in

The standard route: a three-year BSc (Hons) in Nursing at a university, choosing one of four fields — adult, children's (paediatric), mental health, or learning disability nursing. You register with the NMC in that field, and it shapes where you can work, so the choice matters at application stage. Some courses are dual-field.
Postgraduate conversion for existing graduates: a two-year MSc or PGDip in Nursing, open to people with a degree in another subject (a health or life science degree helps for some courses but is often not required). This is a well-established route and common among career changers.
Degree apprenticeship in nursing: you are employed by an NHS trust or other provider, paid a salary, and study part-time — typically around four years. Places are limited and usually go to people already working in healthcare, often as healthcare assistants.
Nursing associate route: a two-year foundation degree apprenticeship qualifying you as a nursing associate (a separate NMC-registered role in England only), then 'topping up' to full registered nurse status. Common for people already in support roles; not available across all four UK nations.

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Overseas-qualified nurses register through an NMC process involving English language evidence and a test of competence. Not a graduate route as such, but a significant part of the UK nursing workforce.
Unusual: there is no route into registered nursing via a general graduate scheme, an unrelated degree alone, or on-the-job training without an approved programme. The NMC register is the gate.

What employers ask for

An NMC-approved nursing programme — this is non-negotiable. Degree subject 'mattering' isn't really the question: you either hold an approved nursing qualification or you cannot register.
For undergraduate entry, universities typically ask for A-levels or equivalent (BTEC, Access to HE Diploma, Scottish Highers) usually including a science or health subject, plus GCSE English and maths at grade 4/C or above. Exact grade requirements vary a lot between universities.
For postgraduate entry, usually a 2:1 or 2:2 in any degree depending on the university, sometimes with a preference for biological or health-related subjects, and often a requirement for recent relevant experience.
Care experience before applying — paid healthcare assistant work, care home work, or substantial volunteering. Some courses require it, most strongly prefer it, and it is the single most common gap in unsuccessful applications.

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An enhanced DBS (criminal records) check, occupational health clearance including vaccination status, and a values-based interview. Selection weighs attitude and understanding of the profession heavily, not just grades.
Clinical placements: around half of a nursing programme is spent on placement in real services, including night shifts and weekends. NHS-funded students in England can apply for a non-repayable training grant; funding arrangements differ across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Skills that matter

Clinical assessment and spotting deterioration

The core professional skill is noticing that a patient is becoming unwell before the numbers make it obvious, and escalating with enough confidence to be acted on.

Drug calculations and numeracy under pressure

You will work out infusion rates and paediatric doses by weight, often mid-shift with interruptions, and an arithmetic slip is a patient safety incident.

Prioritising when everything is urgent

A typical shift has more tasks than time, and deciding what can wait twenty minutes and what cannot is the judgement that separates a safe nurse from an overwhelmed one.

Structured, precise written documentation

Records are the legal account of what care was given and why, are read by every other professional involved, and are scrutinised if anything goes wrong.

Assertiveness with colleagues

Challenging a prescription that looks wrong or pushing a busy doctor to review a patient is a routine expectation, and requires being direct with people more senior than you.

Emotional containment and self-management

You deal with death, aggression and distress regularly, and need to stay functional during the shift and process it afterwards rather than carrying it home unmanaged.

Putting these on a CV? We counted which skills 12,914 live graduate adverts ask for, and what to do with the answer — part of our application advice.

Where it leads

Newly registered nurse — usually a preceptorship period of several months to a year, with a named supervisor, reduced expectations and structured sign-off of competencies. On the NHS pay structure this is normally Band 5.
Experienced staff nurse specialising: intensive care, emergency, theatres, oncology, community, district nursing, health visiting or school nursing (the last two need further qualifications). Many nurses move fields or settings at this point, and specialist courses are often employer-funded.
Senior nurse or charge nurse / ward sister / deputy — typically Band 6 then Band 7 in the NHS — running a ward or team, managing rotas, staffing and incidents as well as clinical work. Timelines vary widely: some reach this in a few years, others stay clinical by choice for a long time.
Three broad directions from there: advanced clinical practice (advanced nurse practitioner or clinical nurse specialist, often with a master's and independent prescribing qualification, seeing and treating patients autonomously); management (matron, service or director of nursing roles); or education and research (university lecturer, clinical educator, research nurse).
Sideways moves are common and normal: practice nursing in GP surgeries, occupational health, prison and military nursing, aesthetics, insurance and medico-legal work, pharmaceutical industry roles, NHS 111 and telephone triage, or agency and bank work for flexibility.

What people get wrong

“Nurses carry out doctors' instructions.”

Registered nurses are autonomous professionals with their own legal accountability to the NMC. You are expected to make independent assessments and to refuse or challenge an instruction you believe is unsafe — 'the doctor told me to' is not a defence.

“It is mostly hands-on care at the bedside.”

Much of a registered nurse's shift is coordination, documentation, medication rounds and communication with other teams. Direct personal care is often delivered by healthcare assistants under the nurse's direction, which surprises — and sometimes disappoints — new registrants.

“Nursing means working on a hospital ward.”

Large numbers of nurses work in the community, GP practices, mental health teams, prisons, schools, hospices, care homes, occupational health and the private sector. Mental health and learning disability nursing in particular look very little like the hospital ward image.

“The degree is three years of lectures with a bit of placement.”

Roughly half the programme is supervised clinical placement, unpaid, including nights, weekends and travel to different sites. Students often describe it as doing a full-time job and a degree simultaneously, and it is a major reason people leave the course.

Where this varies

The four fields of nursing are genuinely different jobs sharing a register. Adult nursing in an acute hospital is fast-paced and heavily task- and observation-driven; mental health nursing centres on therapeutic relationships, risk assessment and the Mental Health Act, with far less physical intervention; children's nursing involves working through parents as much as with the patient; learning disability nursing is largely community-based and focused on helping people access services and live independently. Setting matters as much as field — community and district nursing means lone working with a car and a caseload, while theatre or intensive care nursing is highly technical and closely team-based. Employer type varies too: NHS roles follow national pay bands and structured preceptorship, whereas care homes, private hospitals and agencies set their own pay, may offer less structured support for new registrants, and often expect more autonomy sooner. Regulation and education funding also differ across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and the nursing associate role exists only in England.

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General guidance about the role across the UK market, not about any specific employer. Entry routes and requirements vary — always check the individual job advert.