ROLES / CAREER ROLES

• The caregiver role has traditionally included those activities that assist the client physically and psychologically while preserving the client’s dignity.
• Caregiver - nursing actions may involve full care for the completely dependent client, partial care for the partially dependent client, and supportive-educative care to assist clients in attaining their highest possible level of health and wellness.
• Caregiver - Caregiving encompasses the physical, psychosocial, developmental, cultural, and spiritual levels.
• In the role of communicator, nurses identify client problems and then communicate these verbally or in writing to other members of the healthcare team.
• Teacher - nurse helps clients learn about their health and the healthcare procedures they need to perform to restore or maintain their health.
• Teacher - nurse assesses the client’s learning needs and readiness to learn, sets specific learning goals in conjunction with the client, enacts teaching strategies, and measures learning.
• Teacher - nurses also teach assistive personnel (AP) to whom they assign care, and they share their expertise with other nurses and health professionals. 
• A client advocate acts to protect the client. In this role the nurse may represent the client’s needs and wishes to other health professionals.
• Client Advocate - assist clients in exercising their rights and help them speak up for themselves
• Counseling is the process of helping a client to recognize and cope with stressful psychologic or social problems, to develop improved interpersonal relationships, and to promote personal growth.
• Counselor - involves providing emotional, intellectual, and psychologic support.
• Counselor - nurse counsels primarily healthy individuals with normal adjustment difficulties and focuses on helping the individual develop new attitudes, feelings, and behaviors by encouraging the client to look at alternative behaviors, recognize the choices, and develop a sense of control.
• The nurse acts as a change agent when assisting clients to make modifications in their behavior.
• Change Agent - Nurses also often act to make changes in a system, such as clinical care, if it is not helping a client return to health.
• Change Agent - Nurses are continually dealing with change in the healthcare system. Technologic change, change in the age of the client population, and changes in medications are just a few of the changes nurses deal with daily. 
• A leader influences others to work together to accomplish a specific goal. The leader role can be employed at different levels: individual client, family, groups of clients, colleagues, or the community.
• Effective leadership is a learned process requiring an understanding of the needs and goals that motivate people, the knowledge to apply the leadership skills, and the interpersonal skills to influence others.
• The nurse manages the nursing care of individuals, families, and communities. The nurse manager also assigns and delegates nursing activities to ancillary workers and other nurses, and supervises and evaluates their performance.
• Nurse case managers work with the multidisciplinary healthcare team to measure the effectiveness of the case management plan and to monitor outcomes. Each agency or unit specifies the role of the nurse case manager.
• The case manager works with primary or staff nurses to oversee the care of a specific caseload. The case manager is the primary nurse or provides some level of direct care to the client and family.
• Research Consumer - In a clinical area, nurses need to (a) have some awareness of the process and language of research, (b) be sensitive to issues related to protecting the rights of human subjects, (c) participate in the identification of significant researchable problems, and (d) be a discriminating consumer of research findings.
• Certified Nurse Practitioner provide care, independently, in a range of settings and in one of six defined client populations: family and individual across the lifespan; adult-gerontology (acute care or primary care); women’s health and gender-related health; neonatal; pediatrics (acute care or primary care); and psychiatric or mental health.
• Clinical Nurse Specialist usually work in a specialized area of nursing practice defined by parameters such as disease or medical specialty (e.g., oncology, diabetes); population (e.g., children, seniors, women); setting (e.g., critical care, emergency department); type of care (e.g., rehabilitation, mental health); and type of problem (e.g., pain, eating disorders).
• Clinical Nurse Specialist may serve as educators or outcome managers, conduct research, supervise staff, or manage cases to ensure the best possible client treatment.
• Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist administer anesthesia for surgical and other procedures and provide pre- and postanesthesia care for individuals across the lifespan.
• Certified Nurse Midwife provide primary healthcare for women from adolescence throughout the lifespan. In addition to general primary care, they also provide the following: gynecological and family planning services; pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum care; healthy newborn baby care; and treatment of male partners for sexually transmitted diseases.