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Medical careers are not just the providence of doctors, but are comprised of, instead, a multidisciplinary team of professionals that work together to provide high standards of care for every patient. For students who are interested in working with patients and their families, nursing is an attractive potential career. Physicians, in today's environment, are simply overloaded with patients and so nurses pick up the duty of patient and family education, as well as spending more time with people in general. Once you acquire a nursing degree, specialization comes into play and if you want to be a pediatric nurse there are certain steps to follow.

It is not every profession that can witness a child grow up, but pediatrics deals with infants all the way through to adolescence. If you feel this is the perfect avenue for your talents and aspirations then you must understand the route of becoming a nurse.

The first thing to do, however, is to become a nurse in the first place and there are different avenues available to you to pursue this goal. If you're feeling iffy about spending four years pursuing an undergraduate nursing degree and becoming licensed as a Registered Nurse (RN), than becoming a licensed practical nurse may be the choice for you. This only requires a year of training, but your scope of duties is extremely limited when compared to RNs who can work in all areas of a hospital.

LPNs go through, on average, one year of training but their resulting duties are limited. RNs are able to work all over hospitals, but it is practitioner who possess the unique quality of being able to diagnose and prescribe medication, much like a physician. Becoming a practitioner means procuring a master's degree.

Once you decide on training in pediatrics, however, it isn't just a matter of working in a new department, you must be trained. This is done in-house in a similar fashion to the residencies that physicians participate in, where you will attend lectures and on-the-job training that will familiarize you with the specific issues and struggles inherent in your particular pediatric field.

Sub-specialties are common and so you can work in a number of areas. The NICU, or Newborn Intensive Care Unit, specializes in problems afflicting the newly born and can be an extremely rewarding, but difficult job. There are also positions in oncology, emergency medicine, and family health in general.

This latter position is unique in that you'll be saying the same patients over successive years as they come in for immunizations and standard check-ups. If you choose the field of pediatrics for your nursing career, it's as rewarding as anything else under the healthcare umbrella.