Nursing is a health care profession that requires an individual to work independently or collaborate in a team to care for others (patients) and help them to maintain and more importantly, restore the health of these patients. This profession requires a combination of science and art as nurses must be able to apply knowledge and other technical aspects into practice and at the same time, establish a caring relationship with patients.

Generally, nursing is separated into two categories namely registered nurse (RN) and registered practical nurse (RPN). Once an individual becomes a registered nurse, he/she is accountable and must be responsible for the decisions made. Even though all nurses study and learn the same theories and processes, registered nurse spent a longer period to improve their knowledge in critical thinking, research utilization and clinical practice.

Nursing is divided into separate divisions such as pediatric, geriatric, acute care and long-term care, home health nursing, live-in nurse, orthopedic, cardiac, oncology, psychiatric and mental health as well as learning disability nursing. Well, there are many definitions to explain and explicitly describe the services a nurse can offer and the required knowledge to become a registered health care practitioner.

But nevertheless, all the definitions incorporate the same key concepts that best describe the job scope of a nurse – nursing work will not focus solely on sickness only and the patients can come from all walks of life in different settings, and major phenomena of concern is the identification of responses to actual and real health problems.