by If you love to travel and you have experience and preferences within the nursing field, choosing a cruise ship career can be a great choice.
A nurse on a cruise ship will work in a small medical team, and that is why he or she will have a lot of opportunities to work individually and in a one-on-one form with passengers.
Princess Cruises and other cruise lines have different facilities for treating ill passengers.
Some are a walk-in clinic where you can treat smaller injuries and care for non-urgent patients.
Others are fully-equipped medical facilities where you can treat almost any injury that can happen on a ship.
For example, if you want to work on a Princess Cruise, you will have a minimum of three years in professional experience in emergency or acute care settings.
Acute care is different from an urgent-care facility and is more of a hospital working environment.
Any nurse who wishes to work on a cruise ship must have a certificate in Advanced Cardiac Life Support – ACLS and hold an active RN license.
If you speak Mandarin or Japanese and you meet all the mentioned requirements, you won’t have issues find employment on a cruise.
These nurses are in high demand on all cruise lines.
If you want to work as a nurse on the Royal Caribbean cruise line, you have to have at least three years of experience in either an emergency or intensive care unit (ICU) work environment.
Additional requirements are an active nursing license from any state, ACLS certificate, and Basic Life Support (BLS) certificate.
Smaller cruise lines sometimes have different job requirements for nurses.
For example, if you have two years of nursing experience, you are eligible to work on a Viking River Cruises lines.
The Viking River Cruise company values yachting experience and hospitality.
The working Visa is needed if you wish to work as a nurse in any other country other than the USA.
Daily duties and work of a nurse on a ship differ from nurses working in other healthcare facilities.
Shifts are different and may last from four to 12 hours.
However, you can expect to take care of urgent patients outside the working hours.
Other elements differ from company to company, but medical staff is rarely allowed to mingle with other guests on the cruise ship.
In most cases, companies offer personal cabins and meals for medical staff.
Working as a nurse on a cruise ship is a great career option.
You will have plenty of opportunities to respond to urgent issues on the ship and to do triage call in the infirmary.
More than anywhere else, onboard nurses work with physicians on board to provide the best possible treatment and help patients.
Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA) regulates and reviews cruise line infirmaries according to the standards set by the American College of Emergency Physicians.
In situations in which patients are highly critical and unstable to remain on the ship, nurses may assist in transport to a local healthcare facility.
For example, if one of the patients has a myocardial infarction (MI), the nurse and physician will react and stabilize the patient.
After that, a physician can order transport to the nearest healthcare facility which has proper equipment and offer the best possible care.
Sometimes nurses go along with the patient to make sure that the patent is carefully cared for, and submitted to the hospital.
However, the onboard nurse isn’t something that each person can take, but adventurous nurses may enjoy all aspects of the job.
For many nurses with experience in emergency or ICU nursing, taking a job as a nurse on a cruise ship is the best career choice.
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