Aesthetic nurses go by many names. You may see them referred to as cosmetic nurses or even nurse injectors. While there may be small differences in the names, the core of what they do in their daily work remains the same—helping patients look and feel their best via cosmetic procedures.

While this niche line of nursing work is certainly a departure from the life-and-death stakes of working in a critical care nursing role, it still depends on skilled and safety-conscious nursing professionals. At face value, it’s an alluring field for some, but there’s a lot to know about aesthetic nursing before you dive in, as it is a fairly significant departure from what you’ll find with most nursing roles.

We’re here to provide expert insight into the role of an aesthetic nurse and what it takes to become one.

What does an aesthetic nurse do?

Aesthetic nurses consult with patients and perform examinations regarding elective procedures. During these consultations, they help patients determine what body changes they would like and suggest options for procedures that can help them reach these goals. There are many procedures aesthetic nurses perform. Some of the most common aesthetic elective procedures include:

• Injectables: Injectables can have a wide range of effects. Neuromodulators (like Botox^®) treat fine lines and wrinkles by relaxing the underlying muscle. Dermal fillers, like Juvéderm^® and Restylane^®, can reduce wrinkles by adding volume to areas like the lips or sagging areas like the hollow of the cheeks or under the eyes.
• Laser and light treatments: Lasers can treat small imperfections like wrinkles, scars and warts. Others use heat to promote collagen production. Lasers are also used for tattoo removal, unwanted hair, spider veins or redness.
• Non-invasive body contouring: There are several ways to remove excess fat from the body. Low-level laser therapy uses cold laser therapy to target and break down adipose cells. Clinicians can also use ultrasound therapy to direct sound waves toward adipose cells and disrupt them or use radiofrequency therapy to destroy adipose cells through heat. Recontouring can also be done through dermal fillers in some areas.
• Skin treatments: These are used to improve the overall appearance and health of the skin. Treatments include chemical peels, dermaplaning, microdermabrasion and microneedling.

Not all aesthetic nurses perform all of these treatments. It depends on the clinic and their capabilities. Aesthetic nurses can work in private practices, hospitals, dermatology offices and medical spas.

Many nurses new to aesthetics start with skin treatments, body contouring and laser/light procedures before getting trained in administering injectables, which takes an advanced knowledge of anatomy and the nuances of working with different injectables.

In addition to performing these procedures, aesthetic nurses also do a lot of education to help patients manage their expectations and care for themselves pre- and post-treatment.

Plastic surgery vs. aesthetic nurse

When examining the work of an aesthetic nurse, it’s important to make a distinction between these nurses and the nurses who work in elective plastic surgery centers. Both roles ultimately strive to help their patients feel at ease in their own skin, but there are significant differences. The easiest way to see this distinction is in the services the different specialties provide.

Aesthetic clinics focus on non-surgical solutions and other in-office treatments to enhance the patient’s appearance.

Plastic surgery nurses specialize in caring for patients who undergo cosmetic surgical procedures like liposuctions, breast augmentation/reductions, face and neck lifts, hair transplants or gender reassignment procedures. This means that a lot of their work is centered around procedures, which include pre- and post-op care. They may also function as the circulating nurse in the operating room.

You’re ready for a new career and a new adventure in your life. You’ve heard some about the potential benefits of the healthcare field, and with a steady need for nurses, being a nurse looks like it could be a promising career.

One intriguing prospect for you could be taking up work as a travel nurse. If you’re interested in a position with some potential for adventure and the opportunity to see new places, this job could be for you.

Before you jump into this career path, you’re probably wondering a little more about some of the pros and cons of travel nursing. We talked with a travel nurse to see what being a travel nurse is really like. Keep reading for the inside scoop on this career path.

What is being a travel nurse like?

Travel nurses are constantly moving due to the temporary nature of their work contracts, according to Yasmine Seidu, a travel nurse and founder of Nursepective. Typically, travel nursing positions last just a few months before these nurses have an opportunity to switch jobs and learn the ropes of a new facility.

“There are a lot of great things about being a travel nurse as well,” says Seidu, “You get to see different parts of the country (or world), experience new cultures and learn new things every day. It can be tough at times, but it’s also immensely rewarding.”

What should new nurses know about travel nursing?

Obviously, there are a lot of moving parts to being a travel nurse. When starting a travel nursing role, there are a few insider tidbits that can make your life easier.

Seidu recommends doing a lot of research before you start travel nursing. Beyond articles like this one, digging into the travel nursing agency you want to work for, investigating the area you’ll be working in and fully understanding your contracts are all important.

Additionally, she mentions talking with an accountant to figure out how to do your taxes with all the moving involved. Things can get pretty complex if you’re working in several different states over the course of a year, and the last thing you want in a new job is tax trouble.

Travel nursing pros and cons

Now that you know a little more about travel nursing, let’s look at some of the pros and cons of these roles.

Pro: Travel

Let’s start with the obvious—you have a good reason to go somewhere new. Travel nurses get the opportunity to see the state, country or even the world. Meeting new people, experiencing new places and finding out what different places have to offer are all perks of travel nursing.

Being paid to move where there’s always something new to do or discover is an undeniably intriguing perk, particularly for nurses who have yet to really put their roots down and want to explore new locales.

Con: Frequent moves

The downside of this travel is that travel nurses are always moving and having to adapt to a new location.

“Traveling can be both physically and emotionally draining due to the demands of the job and constant relocation,” Seidu says.

While some agencies may provide housing directly, most will typically provide a housing stipend instead. This means that the nurse is responsible for finding a place to live, which isn’t always easy or affordable, depending on the location. These moving benefits are not guaranteed to be included with a contract role either, so some opportunities may be less viable.

Pro: Pay

The most calculable perk of being a travel nurse is that these roles usually come with higher pay.

“Travel nurses typically earn more money than nurses in traditional healthcare settings or staff positions,” Seidu says.

While it’s not guaranteed you’ll earn more per hour as a travel nurse, there’s a reason this is generally true. Travel nurses are often relied upon to help providers fill a critical short-term staffing need, and those organizations are often willing to pay a premium to ensure they can attract a viable candidate—particularly when factoring in the relative inconvenience of moving to take on this work.

Con: Potentially limited benefits

While this pay boost is a huge boon, the financial downside to travel nursing is that it doesn’t always offer benefits, or at least not the full range of benefits a full-time nurse may have. This means that you may need to set some of that extra pay aside to cover things like health insurance or retirement funds. However, Seidu does note that this is starting to change, with more agencies now offering at least partial benefits.

Pro: Opportunities to learn new things

Working in so many different settings, travel nurses are always learning something new and growing in their skills as a nurse.

Seidu says, “Working in a new location and with new people allows travel nurses to learn new things, new skills, new techniques, different EHRs (electronic health records) and policies, which helps them grow as professionals.”

All this can be great to add to your resume. If you ever decide to stop travel nursing, you’ll have plenty of skills to draw on for future employment opportunities.

Con: Your social life can take a hit

As you’re moving from place to place, finding new friends—and maintaining ties with existing friends—can be a challenge. Loneliness and keeping up with existing long-distance relationships are a few trials of always being around new people.

However, this can also be the perfect opportunity to meet new people, make new friends and shake up your social life.

“I have made lifelong friends from friends I met thanks to travel nursing,” Seidu says.

Most of us dread the thought of needles and IVs at the doctor’s office. However, if you’ve had a nurse who managed to do the job in one stick or have had the unfortunate experience of being poked several times in one visit, you know what a difference a well-trained nurse can make.

When you’ve had an IV or watched a patient on a medical drama wince through one, did you know that some nurses can focus their careers specifically on this critical skill? These nurses—vascular access nurses—have experience and often special training to make this situation and other, more advanced, techniques as painless as possible.

What is vascular access nursing? What training do these nurses have? Keep reading to learn more about this nursing specialty that isn’t for the faint of heart.

What are vascular access nurses?

As the job title suggests, vascular access nurses are focused on the tasks and skills needed for accessing a patient’s veins. That might sound simple, but there’s a lot that this entails.

These nurses start IVs as well as other difficult-to-initiate lines like peripherally inserted central catheters (PICCs) and central venous catheters (CVCs). And if a patient leaving the facility needs to have one of these lines, the vascular access nurse teaches the patient how to take care of the line at home, including the precautions to take to help prevent infection.

Through all these tasks, vascular access nurses work with doctors who tell the nurse what type of line to insert. They may also work with the radiology department to confirm the line’s placement. And obviously, they interact directly with patients when inserting lines.

You’ll find these nurses doing their job usually in hospitals, as well as surgery centers, long-term care facilities or units in nursing homes.

While this job has some similarities to IV or infusion nurses, vascular access nurses are responsible for setting up the IV line, while IV or infusion nurses are only responsible for giving a patient the medication or infusions that they need via an IV or other vascular access port.

Vascular access nurse training

What qualifications or certifications do vascular access nurses need?

The most important qualification a vascular access nurse needs is a Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) degree or an Associate’s degree in Nursing (ADN). While there are differences, both of these programs will prepare you for the world of nursing and position you to become a registered nurse (RN).

Additional professional certifications like being a Certified Registered Nurse Infusion (CRNI®) or having a Vascular Access Board Certification (VA-BC®) can set you apart and show that you’ve gone the extra mile toward this job. While these are recommendations or preferences for some jobs, other employers may require these qualifications.

Beyond certifications, having experience working with IVs and other types of vascular access is important for this career. Clinical experience in a nursing program can obviously teach you a lot about this and give you hands-on knowledge. Beyond clinicals, though, there are plenty of ways to add further experience to your resume, like working as a phlebotomist, and seeking out opportunities in units that regularly use IVs, PICC lines and CVCs—so intensive care, oncology and emergency units are all solid options for building experience.

Once you’ve set your aim toward being a nurse, there’s a world of possibilities for where your career could take you. With all the different types of nursing specialties and the niche types of care provided, it can be tough to keep it all straight—and you’re not the only one who might feel this way.

Patients, too, can feel overwhelmed as they enter a whirlwind of healthcare specialists and recommendations. Luckily, there’s a type of nursing focused on helping patients find what they need through the whole healthcare process. This nursing specialty is called case management nursing.

By being a case management nurse, you get to help patients through their journey to health and have a fulfilling career in the healthcare field. But what exactly is case management nursing? And what does the nurse case manager job look like?

What is case management nursing?

Case management nurses work with patients who often have complex medical needs through all the stages of their treatment. Typically, these patients are dealing with long-term chronic illnesses, have geriatric conditions or are recovering from serious injuries. As a patient enters the healthcare system, case management nurses assist patients as they navigate through initial evaluations and determining available options for treatment. Their job is to empower patients with information on what their possibilities are for care.

These nurses also assist the patient with information on costs and insurance coverage, advocating for the patient through the process, especially when it comes to ways to reduce costs. And they can help connect patients with care options and support.

Finally, case management nurses coordinate and oversee the patient’s care to ensure they are getting the attention and assistance they need. Often, their patient care expertise is used to help connect the dots for those on the administrative and payment side. For example, a patient’s individual specialist visit may look extraneous to insurers without the full context of the patient’s case—and that’s not always easy to glean from medical records and billing statements.

As Nancy Mitchell, a registered nurse and contributing writer at Assisted Living Center, says, “Regardless of the circumstances, the most important part of the role is to account for the patient’s emotional and physical well-being and to lobby for their rights when social services are involved.”

Who do case management nurses work with?

Because case management nurses are involved in many stages of patient care and connect patients with resources, they will work alongside a wide variety of other professionals, whether that be doctors, other nurses, rehabilitation specialists, hospital staff or even insurance providers. In addition to working with the patient, they may also work closely with the patient’s caregiver.

For instance, Mitchell says in her role as a case management nurse, she worked with patients’ primary care physicians, other nurses and some specialists. There’s no cookie-cutter formula, though—the overlap with other healthcare professionals depends entirely on the needs of the patient.

Where do case management nurses work?

Given the broad range of care specialists these nursing professionals interact with, it’s understandable if you’re wondering who employs them and where they physically set up shop, so to speak.

In practice, you’ll find case management nurses working in a wide variety of settings. Most nurses in this specialty don’t actually work at a hospital. Instead, many work for insurance companies, for workers’ compensation organizations or in home healthcare.

That being said, many case management nurses still work in hospitals. All this means is that there’s a lot of variety for where you could work as a case management nurse. Whether hospitals are where you want to spend your time, you may have options as a case management nurse.

What makes case management nursing unique?

Aside from the different places case management nurses can work, this job is also unique because of its broad, comprehensive focus. Rather than specializing in a certain subfield in healthcare like cardiology, these nurses care for patients throughout their whole time moving toward wellness. In this way, they also work more closely with a patient over a longer period of time, rather than a position like an ER nurse, who may only see a patient once when they enter the hospital system.