---
title: "Acute Care Nurse"
description: "Provide advanced nursing care for patients with acute conditions such as heart attacks, respiratory distress syndrome, or shock. May care for pre- and…"
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/acute-care-nurse"
last-updated: "2026-08-23T15:56:39.581Z"
---

# Acute Care Nurse

**Category:** Healthcare Practitioners and Technical · **SOC code:** 29-1141 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 29-1141.01

Provide advanced nursing care for patients with acute conditions such as heart attacks, respiratory distress syndrome, or shock. May care for pre- and post-operative patients or perform advanced, invasive diagnostic or therapeutic procedures.

Also advertised as: Acute Care Nurse; Cardiac Interventional Care Nurse; Cardiovascular ICU Nurse (Cardiovascular Intense Care Unit Nurse); Cardiovascular Surgery Acute Care Nurse Practitioner (Cardiovascular Surgery ACNP); Charge Nurse; DSU Nurse (Day Surgery Unit Nurse); MSN (Medical Surgical Nurse); PCU RN (Progressive Care Unit Registered Nurse).

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $97,550 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $46.90/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $68,940 to $137,470, with the middle half between $80,330 and $112,350
- **Total US employment:** 3,379,720
- **Typical entry education:** Bachelor's
- **Preparation required:** Medium preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +4.9% over 2024–2034 (BLS EP, 2024–2034)
- **Annual job openings:** 189,100 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 56/100 — a NueCareer heuristic over O\*NET work activities and context, not a BLS or O\*NET figure

## Pay

National wage distribution, BLS OEWS, May 2025, across 3,379,720 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $68,940 |
| 25th | $80,330 |
| 50th (median) | $97,550 |
| 75th | $112,350 |
| 90th | $137,470 |
| Mean (average) | $101,420 |

### Pay by state

The 15 highest-paying states, by median annual wage. The cost-of-living-adjusted column divides the state median by that state's BEA Regional Price Parity, so the columns answer different questions: the first is what the job pays there, the second is what that pay buys there.

| State | Median annual wage | Cost-of-living adjusted | Employment |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| CA | $140,270 | $126,689 | 338,940 |
| HI | $136,320 | $123,983 | 12,940 |
| OR | $129,010 | $124,815 | 39,730 |
| WA | $124,200 | $116,061 | 69,260 |
| AK | $109,480 | $106,957 | 7,510 |
| NY | $109,440 | $101,408 | 205,810 |
| NJ | $106,500 | $97,882 | 92,680 |
| MA | $104,550 | $98,859 | 88,200 |
| NV | $103,670 | $103,692 | 27,070 |
| CT | $102,740 | $99,160 | 40,110 |
| DC | $102,540 | $93,302 | 11,440 |
| MN | $101,510 | $102,929 | 70,110 |
| RI | $100,640 | $98,397 | 10,090 |
| CO | $100,260 | $97,291 | 54,490 |
| MD | $99,790 | $95,075 | 52,910 |

38 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 53 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/acute-care-nurse/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/acute-care-nurse.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 3,391,000 in the 2024–2034 base year to 3,557,100 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 166,100 jobs, or +4.9%. Faster than average: 4.9% against 3.1% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 189,100 openings a year are expected on average, counting openings from growth as well as from workers leaving the occupation permanently. Source: BLS EP, 2024–2034.

## How to get in

- **Typical entry education:** Bachelor's degree (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Medium preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed".
- **Related work experience typically required:** None.
- **Typical on-the-job training:** None.

### Education people in this job actually hold

O\*NET surveys incumbents, so this distribution describes who is in the job today and can differ from the BLS entry requirement above.

| Education level | Share of workers |
| --- | --- |
| Bachelor's Degree | 57.1% |
| Associate's Degree (or other 2-year degree) | 19.1% |
| Post-Baccalaureate Certificate | 9.5% |
| Master's Degree | 4.8% |
| Post-Master's Certificate | 4.8% |
| Doctoral Degree | 4.8% |

## What the work involves

- Discuss illnesses and treatments with patients and family members.
- Perform emergency medical procedures, such as basic cardiac life support (BLS), advanced cardiac life support (ACLS), and other condition-stabilizing interventions.
- Document data related to patients' care, including assessment results, interventions, medications, patient responses, or treatment changes.
- Administer blood and blood product transfusions or intravenous infusions, monitoring patients for adverse reactions.
- Obtain specimens or samples for laboratory work.
- Manage patients' pain relief and sedation by providing pharmacologic and non-pharmacologic interventions, monitoring patients' responses, and changing care plans accordingly.
- Collaborate with members of multidisciplinary health care teams to plan, manage, or assess patient treatments.
- Assess the needs of patients' family members or caregivers.

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Reading Comprehension — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Listening — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Learning Strategies — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Transferable skills

These are the skills that carry into other occupations, and they drive the related-occupation and career-change rankings on this site.

- Service Orientation — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Social Perceptiveness — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Complex Problem Solving — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Instructing — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Time Management — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Persuasion — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Medicine and Dentistry — importance 4.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Customer and Personal Service — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Education and Training — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- English Language — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Psychology — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Therapy and Counseling — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Oral Comprehension — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Comprehension — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Expression — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Problem Sensitivity — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Deductive Reasoning — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Inductive Reasoning — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

## Who it suits

O\*NET rates every occupation on the six Holland (RIASEC) interest areas, on a 1–7 scale. This occupation's strongest areas are Social (S), Investigative (I), Realistic (R).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| S — Social | 5.80 |
| I — Investigative | 5.66 |
| R — Realistic | 3.70 |
| C — Conventional | 3.32 |
| E — Enterprising | 1.76 |
| A — Artistic | 1.75 |

### Personality fit

These scores are **derived by NueCareer**, not published by any government agency: they are cosine similarities between a personality type's trait profile and this occupation's O\*NET interest and work-style ratings, expressed 0–100. Treat them as a starting point for exploration, not as evidence that a type belongs in a job.

| Type | Fit score (0–100) |
| --- | --- |
| ISFJ | 64.2 |
| ISFP | 61.5 |
| INFJ | 58.9 |
| ISTJ | 57.2 |
| ISTP | 53.5 |

Best-fitting types: ISFJ, ISFP.

## Related occupations

O\*NET's primary related occupations, in its own ranked order.

- [Registered Nurse](https://nuecareer.com/careers/registered-nurse) — median $97,550
- [Critical Care Nurse](https://nuecareer.com/careers/critical-care-nurse) — median $97,550
- [Clinical Nurse Specialist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/clinical-nurse-specialist) — median $97,550
- [Paramedic](https://nuecareer.com/careers/paramedic) — median $60,600
- [Advanced Practice Psychiatric Nurse](https://nuecareer.com/careers/advanced-practice-psychiatric-nurse) — median $97,550
- [Nurse Midwife](https://nuecareer.com/careers/nurse-midwife) — median $134,040
- [Respiratory Therapist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/respiratory-therapist) — median $82,280
- [Licensed Practical Nurse](https://nuecareer.com/careers/licensed-practical-nurse) — median $64,400
- [Nursing Assistant](https://nuecareer.com/careers/nursing-assistant) — median $42,260
- [Emergency Medical Technician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/emergency-medical-technician) — median $44,470

## Sources

- **O\*NET** — O\*NET 30.3 Database, May 2026. https://www.onetcenter.org/database.html
- **BLS OEWS** — BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. https://www.bls.gov/oes/
- **BLS EP** — BLS Employment Projections, Table 1.2, 2024–2034. https://www.bls.gov/emp/
- **BLS OOH** — BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2024–2034 edition. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/
- **BEA RPP** — BEA Regional Price Parities by State, 2024. https://www.bea.gov/data/prices-inflation/regional-price-parities-state-and-metro-area

---

This bank includes information from the O\*NET 30.3 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). O\*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. NueCareer has transformed the data by joining it to BLS wage and projection data and deriving facet, personality-fit and AI-resilience scores. BLS and BEA data are public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).

O\*NET content is used under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). How these figures are sourced and derived: https://nuecareer.com/careers/methodology

JSON representation of this page: https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/acute-care-nurse