Want to make sure you’ll never be unemployed? Become a nurse.

Job security shouldn’t be any would-be nurse’s primary motivation for entering the field, of course. But with the demand for nurses on the rise — thanks to an aging population that requires more health care and a shortage of faculty in nurse education programs, among other factors — today’s nurses will definitely never have to worry about having a steady paycheck.

Sgt. William Redwine tries to make one thing very clear in his work recruiting nurses for the Army: While they may wind up serving in Iraq or Afghanistan, Army nurses will never be asked to fight themselves.

“When we bring in doctors and nurses, it is solely to do their job,” Sgt. Redwine said. Until this past summer, an Army nurse hadn’t been killed in a war zone in 33 years; the one who died in Baghdad was jogging outside the generally safe Green Zone and was hit by a mortar round. “We take very good care of our doctors and nurses,” Sgt. Redwine said.

Arkansas’s nursing schools do a great job of educating their students about taking care of patients and being an important part of the health care system. But no school can teach everything, which means new nursing graduates sometimes are in for a few surprises when they show up for their first nursing jobs. Nursing is both physically and mentally demanding. Nurses often stay on their feet for hours at a time, commonly work 12-hour shifts, must be able to lift and turn adult patients, and have to juggle the needs of half a dozen patients or more at the same time. Adjusting to the day-to-day realities of the job takes a little time — and a little extra help.

Nurses on TV may still flip through a stack of paper when they’re looking up information on a patient’s chart, but in the real world, technology is rapidly changing that — and a host of other once-routine nursing practices. From robotic surgical instruments to wireless communications devices, nurses these days are expected to know about and use the latest in high-tech.

At 72, Bill Calvert is 50 years older than his youngest co-workers on the nursing staff at St. Vincent Infirmary Medical Center. Nursing has changed drastically since he got his start in the field as a Navy corpsman, and nurses themselves have changed drastically as well. Today’s nurses span four generations: 20-somethings fresh out of nursing school, 30-something Gen-Xers, Baby Boomers in their 40s and 50s, and older, “traditionalist” nurses like Calvert.

Sometimes, illness and injury don’t show up on the outside. Mental illness, behavioral disorders, life crises — they can put people in the hospital just like heart attacks and gall bladder surgery, and when they do, it’s nurses who take care of them as well.

The family atmosphere at Baxter Regional Medical Center is one of the main aspects of the hospital that attracts nurses. And in turn, nurses who are a “fit” for that type of environment are the ones sought by the hospital.

With the nationwide nursing shortage getting worse every year, qualified nurses can choose to work just about anywhere they want to — Little Rock, New York City, even overseas. But new nurses looking for a more family-like atmosphere and the chance to work in a variety of areas should consider joining a hospital in one of Arkansas’s smaller towns.

Since 1981, Jefferson Regional Medical Center (JRMC) in Pine Bluff has been providing nursing education to students all across Southeast Arkansas. More than 800 registered nurses have graduated from the program over the years, and as the need for nurses continues to grow, so does the JRMC School of Nursing.