Skills, knowledge, and abilities required and used by Registered Nurses and Nurse Practitioners include:
- Speaking – Talking to others to effectively convey information.
- Service Orientation – Actively looking for ways to help people.
- Social Perceptiveness – Being aware of others’ reactions and understanding why they react the way they do.
- Reading Comprehension – Understanding written sentences and paragraphs in work related documents.
- Oral Comprehension – The ability to listen to and understand information and ideas presented through spoken words and sentences.
- Judgment and Decision Making – Weighing the relative costs and benefits of a potential action.
- Medicine and Dentistry – Knowledge of the information and techniques needed to diagnose and treat injuries, diseases, and deformities. This includes symptoms, treatment alternatives, drug properties and interactions, and preventive health care measures.
- Biology – Knowledge of plant and animal living tissue, cells, organisms, and entities, including their functions, interdependencies, and interactions with each other and the environment.
- Customer and Personal Service – Knowledge of principles and processes for providing customer and personal services including needs assessment techniques, quality service standards, alternative delivery systems, and customer satisfaction evaluation techniques.
- Chemistry – Knowledge of the composition, structure, and properties of substances and of the chemical processes and transformations that they undergo. This includes uses of chemicals and their interactions, danger signs, production techniques, and disposal methods.
- Problem Sensitivity – The ability to tell when something is wrong or is likely to go wrong. It does not involve solving the problem, only recognizing there is a problem.
- Critical Thinking – Using logic and analysis to identify the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches.