Doctorate of Nursing Practice (DNP) career options in healthcare are many and varied. What a DNP chooses depends on their skills and where their interest lies. The DNP has choices to work in different sectors such as acute care, family care, geriatric care, and holistic care to name a few. The DNP can serve in administrative leadership and leadership positions in research, clinical care delivery, patient outcome and system management, education and direct practice. They will be experts in managing the complex balance between quality of care, access and fiscal responsibilities.
At the completion of the program some of the career options for those graduating with the DNP are:
- Nurse-managed clinics
- Private medical offices
- Public health departments
- Military and veterans facilities
- Schools and universities
- International health organizations
- Walk in clinics
- Hospitals and hospital clinics
- Extended care facilities
- Occupation and employee clinics
- Hospice centers
- Home health care agencies
- Emergency rooms
- Urgent care sites
- Long term care facilities
- Rural and urban area facilities
- Health research
- Pharmaceutical companies
- Nurse educators
Due to the response to changes in health care delivery and emerging health care needs, additional knowledge or content areas have been identified by practicing nurses. In addition the knowledge required to provide leadership in the discipline of nursing is so complex and rapidly changing that the additional or doctoral level education is needed. Evidence exists of more local interest in the markets of the schools that have either initiated a practice doctorate or plan to do so.