Another in our series looking at the different types of nurses that there are. As an opthalmic nurse you’d look after those with diseases of the eyes: things like glaucoma, macular degeneration and other causes of blindness and also to people undergoing eye surgery: from the most basic things like cataracts and Lasik to vastly more advanced things like retinoblastomas. But the important thing is that this is one of the types of nursing that concentrates on one set of organs. You can then specialize further by combining this with working with one group of people (the old say, or children) or in a specific setting (a hospital, a specialist clinic etc.)

I think this is another of those areas of nursing where you’d want to come from the more empathic end of the spectrum of our EQSQ personality tests. For a large percentage of the patients that you treat will be those going blind from one problem or another and humans tend not to react to that all that well.

The training is at first like that for other nursing specialties. You’ll need to take the license exam and before they’ll let you do that you must have taken a full four year college degree, a two year one or a one year Diploma program. The military is also a good place to get this type of training. But you’ll find that the more senior positions, management and so on, are reserved for those with the full college degree. There are, if you want to start work as soon as possible, a number of conversion programs that enable to upgrade the Diploma or junior college degree to a full one.

Continuing our jaunt through the various specialties of nursing we come to neuroscience nurses. These are the nurses who deal with people who have diseases of the nervous system or brain, including those who have genetic, by injury or degenerative diseases. This includes such things as epilepsy, car crashes, head injuries and so on. I would say that you’d want to come from the more empathic end of the spectrum in our EQSQ personality tests if you were going to choose this specialty. For, while great strides have been made here as in many other areas of medicine, for an awful lot of people afflicted with these problems there’s not a great deal that can be done to cure them. Care for them, yes indeed, but cure them, no. There is therefore a certain amount of strain in caring for them.

Training for this area of nursing is the same in its basics as all of the others: you’ll need a full four year college degree, a two year one or a one year Diploma program and then to pass the license exam. You’ll also find that the more senior jobs are reserved for those with the full college degree but if you want to start working sooner then don’t worry: there are plenty of programs to help you upgrade that original college degree to the level where you can get those promotions, management positions and higher ranking jobs.

In men that is. Research reported in The Times shows that women prefer men with lower voices: this means that men with lower voices can have their pick of a larger number of women and thus a larger number of children: for when men do get to pick and choose they tend to pick younger and more fertile women.

But what does this, albeit interesting, result have to do with us and our EQSQ personality tests? Well, the first connection is that with testosterone: we know that lower male voices are to do with there being more testosterone in such men. That connects with the science underlying our personality tests as we also think that what influences a brain to become a “male type” or “female type” is the amount of testosterone that the fetus is exposed to. But, I’ll admit, a fairly feeble connection between this news and our personalty tests.

However, there’s a much stronger one and this is to do with the basics of how science is and should be done. In this story the researchers posit that the lower voices are a signal of that higher testosterone: higher testosterone is also a signifier of greater ability (or rather, the physique required for it) at hunting, and so a better mate. But that might be getting causality mixed up. It might be that a lower voice is a signal of high testosterone, yes, but that the choice is being made from some other signal: perhaps being good at being a hunter or having a hunter’s physique.

Thus it is with our personality tests and the research behind them: previously people thought that men and women were good at certain, different things. Now we know that it’s people with the male or female brain that are so endowed, actually being male or female only provides a probability. And so does science advance.

Returning to the article I mentioned yesterday there’s more interesting things about men and women in the IT world. As we know from our EQSQ personality tests there’s a spectrum of brain types, from systemizers at one end to empathic at the other. The distribution is not even, we’re more likely to see men at one end and women at the other. But this is a probability, not a certainty. We also know that certain jobs suit one brain type more than another: computers suiting the systemizers and that’s why it’s largely a male world, because men mostly are systemizers. In the UK only 20% of computer science students are female but:

Margaret Sambell, of e-skills, a government-funded skills organisation for the IT sector, said that, unless British universities adapted, businesses would turn to China and India for recruitment. “Previously, the role of technology was about automating stuff that used to be done manually. But the focus of IT systems now is on business change and how technology can be used to help companies address new markets and attract new clients. To do this, students need to understand about business and dealing with customers,” she said. “Our research tells us that more than 30 per cent of employers say there are problems recruiting IT graduates with business skills and 40 per cent say there is a shortage of interpersonal skills. Only 3 per cent say there is a shortage of recruits with the right technical skills.”

and

Mr Champion believes that the new course will help to redress the gender balance in the industry, which has long been dominated by men. “The new course plays to the strengths of female students. They contribute equally well on the technical side, once they have overcome the perception of IT as a male-dominated area, and quite often they do better than the men with the softer skills,” he said.

That 20% number looks about right: it talliss well with the number of women we think have the systemizing type brain as shown by the results of our personality tests. But the important point here is I think that while there will still be jobs for the stereotypical geek most of the IT world is no longer that way. The job is no longer supremely technical, the aim is to take the business forward, not to simply write great code. That, in turn, means that the team working skills, the empathy, of the female brain are ever more in demand.

If you’re thinking of going into the computer field that’s an important point that you should consider: yes, the hard technical skills will still be needed, but the people that will really succeed are those who can do that and also display the wider social skills so necessary for working as part of a team.

As regular readers will know we have our EQSQ personality tests here, based on the ground breaking work by Professor Simon Baron Cohen. But the one question we’ve never really quite answered is what they’re for. We know how we can use them, very effectively, of course, because if you take the tests this gives you more information about what you might do in the future: what would be a good career to follow, given your innate personality type. We’ve also floated the idea that the tests might show where you could develop your character more fully: how certain skills might be lacking that could be usefully worked on. But which if these is the most important use of the personality tests? This article in The Times gives an interesting answer:

Computer geeks beware: your days are over. A “charm academy” is being created for IT students in response to employer complaints that too many lack basic social and business skills.

Backers of the initiative say that it is no longer acceptable for universities to churn out students with great software skills but no social ability. What companies need now, they say, are technicians who can talk directly to clients and realise that IT operating systems contribute to the bottom line of the business.

As you can see, employers are increasingly asking that people coming into work are more balanced. Certainly, they want those at th systemizing end of the spectrum (who would be god at those sort of IT tasks) to be good at those IT tasks: but they also want them to be more rounded, better trained in the empathic skills which working as part of a team requires.

So it would seem that the best way to use the personality tests would be to first use them to discover your basic type, the essential character, if you like, and use that to guide you in your choice of training and career. Then, use the tests again to find where you need a little more training and polish, those skills which you’ll need over and above the career specific ones.

Nephrology nurses are those that deal with diseases of the kidneys. These can be caused by diabetes, substance abuse, hypertension (yes, high blood pressure can indeed cause these diseases) and also by infection. While the actual treatment of these diseases is improving all the time this is still a very hard specialty to work in on an emotional level. As and when any of the diseases become serious enough it’s necessary for the patient to go on dialysis (which might be done by a nephrology nurse or a more specialized dialysis nurse). This is the process of using a mechanical filter to do what the kidneys themselves normally do, clean up the blood itself.

So far so good, but the next stage is where you’ll need the empathy as defined by our EQSQ personality tests. As and when dialysis becomes necessary, either it simply continues for the rest of the patient’s life (perhaps three sessions of four or five hours each per week) or the patient will die: the only possible cure is a kidney transplant. However, dialysis itself isn’t perfect: over a period of nine or ten years it itself will kill the patient (or rather, the fact that it isn’t 100% effective will). Finally, there are all to few kidneys available for transplant: most people waiting for one will never get one.

That is, the amjority of those being treated for the more serious forms of kidney disease are simply dying slowly. And even when they are saved by a transplant, that’s usually because someone else has died young. Before you pick this area to work in, you might want to take a look at those personality tests and see if you’ve got the empathic character needed.

Gynecology nurses are another of the nursing specialties were the specialization is in a particular set of organs, rather than a set of diseases or a specific place of work. It’s looking after what are colloquially known, in my part of the world, as “women’s bits”. The reproductive system, in other words, and the diseases that can attack it. I’m willing to be proven wrong here by I would imagine that this is a field which is almost exclusively female: not that there are not men with the necessary amount of empathy, but simply for cultural reasons I would think.

The training for this specialty is much as it is for all other forms of nursing. You’ll need to be licensed as a nurse, and to be able to take that exam you need one of the three following things: a full four year college degree, a two year one or to have been on a one year Diploma program. You’ll also find that the senior jobs (like managing other nurses) and the more interesting ones, will be reserved for those with that full college degree. But if you want to start working and earning more quickly there are many different programs to help you turn that original Diploma into such a degree. You’ll also find that there’s good military training in the basics of nursing: with the influx of women into the uniformed services in recent decades, yes, even in gynecology.

Gastroenterology nurses are those that look after people with diseases of the digestive and intestinal systems. It’s probably one of the nursing specialties better suited to those who, on our EQSQ personality tests, are more to the balanced or even systemizing end of the spectrum. For, even though nursing as a whole definitely suits those towards the empathizing end of the spectrum as shown by those personality tests, this specific part of nursing includes a lot of diagnosis as well as treatment and care. Endoscopy, for example, is now often done by nurses (that’s sticking a glass fiber tube down to have a good look at what’s going on). So, a slightly odd thought for you, that in an overwhelmingly empathic career there are still parts that suit the systemizers.

There’s one other thing I really rather like about gastroenterology: it shows us quite how fast science is developing. We tend not really to notice that things which we didn’t know about 20 years ago are now known about. We can see it in cell phones or computers, but medical science doesn’t occupy our consciousness in the same way. But 20 years, 30 years ago, the main part of gastroenterology was the treatment of ulcers. And the treatment was by diet. Which had, err, no effect. For the cause of ulcers was a bacteria, which could be eradicated by antibiotics. A Nobel Prize was awarded for this discovery: in the process of proving it, the scientist deliberately infected himself with the bacteria to get an ulcer and then was cured by the antibiotic. Who knows what diseases will be simple to cure in another 20 or 30 years?

This is another of the nurse specialties in which you would work on one specific organ or system of the body. In this case, the skin…and did you know that the skin is our bodies’ largest organ? A piece of trivia there for you Like the other forms of nursing which work on a specific organ, most of the jobs are in specialty physicians’ offices or in outpatient centers. That means that, given that these places are generally open regular hours, there is very little shift, night or weekend work if this is the specialty you choose. Some people like that of course, while other’s prefer the changes that shift work provides. Entirely up to you, of course.

Like all forms of registered nursing the training system has three possible routes. You can get a full four year college degree, a two year one or take a one year Diploma program. There are also a lot of military training opportunities and a series of programs to help you pay for such training. After any of the three you the need to pass the license exam, the NCLEX-RN as it is known. While there are these three routes it’s also true that the more senior jobs and the promotions are limited to those with the full college degree. But if you want to start work sooner, there are a number of programs available to help you convert that Diploma into such a degree.

Continuing our look at the different kinds of nurses we come to those specializing in cardiac and vascular problems. This is a different type of specialty than those we’ve covered before: those nurses who work with a specific body system (rather than disease or symptom) tend to work not in hospitals, but in the offices of specialty physicians or outpatient centers. In this case they’ll be dealing usually with post-operative rehabilitation for those who have had, say a heart bypass or a stent fitted.

As I hope these listings of the different forms of nursing are showing to you, there are many different choices you can make, specializing in a disease, a body system or a place of work. All these choices mean that you get to make other further ones: about hours and places of work, for example. If you like the idea of working in a specialist’s office, then perhaps this one might be for you: there won’t be night shifts nor weekends either.

The training for this, as with all forms of registered nurse, is that you have to pass the licence exam. In order to be able to take that, you must have either a four year college degree, a two year one or have been on a one year Diploma program. You’ll also usually find that the more senior jobs and promotions are reserved for those with that full college degree. But if you want to get started earlier, there are plenty of programs which can help you convert the Diploma qualification into that full degree while you are working. The military can also be a good place to get your training.