Hospitals hire registered nurses onto a specific unit, and the unit decides what the job is. Experience counts inside it: 2 years in the emergency department is 2 years of emergency nursing, and a move to intensive care starts closer to the beginning.

Median Salaryof Registered Nurse

10%$22.57/hr

median$36.44/hr

90%$66.68/hr

Top Benefitsof Registered Nurse

Paid time off45%
Retirement savings plan42%
Health insurance37%
Dental insurance36%
Vision insurance36%

What the numeral in the title means

Health systems run a clinical ladder, and the numeral in a posting's title says where the job sits on it. Moving up a rung takes years on the unit, certification and usually a portfolio of committee or project work, and it changes the pay while the assignment stays the same. Charge nurse and triage nurse aren't rungs at all: they're assignments handed out shift by shift, and a posting that names one is describing the work rather than the grade.

More nursing roles

Your questions about registered nurse jobs, answered

Is an ADN enough to work as a registered nurse?: For the license, yes: both degrees sit the same exam and earn the same license. The degree matters in hiring. Many hospitals ask for a BSN outright, or ask you to finish one within a few years of starting, and doing that as an RN-to-BSN while working is ordinary. Magnet requires every nurse manager to hold a nursing degree and the chief nursing officer a master's, with a nursing degree somewhere in the chain; for staff nurses it asks the hospital for its own improvement goal rather than a threshold.
What's a nurse residency program?: A structured first year for new graduates, with a preceptor, classroom time, and a slower ramp onto the unit. Hospitals recruit residency cohorts on their own calendar, often twice a year, and those postings say new graduate where an ordinary opening would ask for years of experience.
Can a registered nurse work outside a hospital?: Plenty do. Clinics, schools, home health and hospice, infusion centers, case management and utilization review all hire RNs, and most of them keep weekday hours instead of a 12-hour rotation.
Do I need a compact license to work in another state?: The Nurse Licensure Compact covers RN and LPN licenses only. A nurse practitioner's RN license can be multistate under it, but the APRN license has to be issued by every state they practice in: a separate APRN compact has been enacted in 5 states and needs 7 before it starts, so today it does nothing. Our RN licensing guide has the mechanics of the nurse compact itself.
What's the nurse-to-patient ratio?: Set by the unit, and in 5 states written into a rule or a statute. California puts the full ladder in regulation, 1:2 in intensive care through 1:5 on med-surg; Oregon put numbers in statute in 2023; New Jersey sets 1:3 in critical care, tightened by acuity; Massachusetts and New York cover intensive care alone, Massachusetts at 1:1 or 1:2 by acuity and New York at 1:2 through a 2023 health department regulation. Other states, New York included, require a staffing committee or public reporting, and elsewhere the number is the employer's.
What certifications do RN jobs ask for beyond the license?: The life support set is standard and unit-dependent, starting with BLS and adding ACLS or PALS where the unit calls for it. The one that changes a career is specialty certification such as CCRN, which takes practice hours in the specialty before you can sit the exam and tends to appear as a preference on senior postings.