Acute Care Nurses
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.
A wage reference for United States.
Published wage percentiles describe a distribution within the source occupation group. They provide context for a career decision; employer packages and job offers have their own terms.
This wage group may include multiple detailed occupations. The figures are for the source group, which may be broader than Acute Care Nurses. They are not an exact-title, employer, experience or seniority match.
May 2025 · USD · United States. Annual and hourly figures are shown only when the source publishes them; neither is calculated from the other.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics occupational wage data, distributed through the O*NET® OnLine service.
Annual wage thresholds
USD per year
Hourly wage thresholds
USD per hour
| Percentile | Annual wage (USD/year) | Hourly wage (USD/hour) |
|---|---|---|
| 10th | $68,940 | $33.14 |
| 25th | $80,330 | $38.62 |
| 50th · Median | $97,550 | $46.90 |
| 75th | $112,350 | $54.02 |
| 90th | $137,470 | $66.09 |
“≥” means at least the published amount; “≤” means at most that amount. These are bounds, not exact values. “Not published” means the source did not provide that figure. Occupational wages follow the source definition and do not establish an employer’s base salary, equity or total compensation.
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What this career involves.
Occupation definitions describe common work. Responsibilities and requirements vary by employer and specific job.
Selected title examples
Expand more title examples (15)
Typical tasks
- Discuss illnesses and treatments with patients and family members.
- Diagnose acute or chronic conditions that could result in rapid physiological deterioration or life-threatening instability.
- Perform emergency medical procedures, such as basic cardiac life support (BLS), advanced cardiac life support (ACLS), and other condition-stabilizing interventions.
- Assess urgent and emergent health conditions, using both physiologically and technologically derived data.
- Set up, operate, or monitor invasive equipment and devices, such as colostomy or tracheotomy equipment, mechanical ventilators, catheters, gastrointestinal tubes, and central lines.
- Document data related to patients' care, including assessment results, interventions, medications, patient responses, or treatment changes.
Expand more tasks (21)
- Administer blood and blood product transfusions or intravenous infusions, monitoring patients for adverse reactions.
- Interpret information obtained from electrocardiograms (EKGs) or radiographs (x-rays).
- Perform administrative duties that facilitate admission, transfer, or discharge of patients.
- 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.
- Participate in patients' care meetings and conferences.
- Treat wounds or superficial lacerations.
- Read current literature, talk with colleagues, and participate in professional organizations or conferences to keep abreast of developments in acute care.
- Provide formal and informal education to other staff members.
- Collaborate with patients to plan for future health care needs or to coordinate transitions and referrals.
- Analyze the indications, contraindications, risk complications, and cost-benefit tradeoffs of therapeutic interventions.
- Distinguish between normal and abnormal developmental and age-related physiological and behavioral changes in acute, critical, and chronic illness.
- Assess the impact of illnesses or injuries on patients' health, function, growth, development, nutrition, sleep, rest, quality of life, or family, social and educational relationships.
- Participate in the development of practice protocols.
- Assist patients in organizing their health care system activities.
- Adjust settings on patients' assistive devices, such as temporary pacemakers.
- Prescribe medications and observe patients' reactions, modifying prescriptions as needed.
- Order, perform, or interpret the results of diagnostic tests and screening procedures based on assessment results, differential diagnoses, and knowledge about age, gender and health status of clients.
- Refer patients for specialty consultations or treatments.
Skills used in this work
- Critical Thinking
- Using logic and reasoning to identify the strengths and weaknesses of alternative solutions, conclusions, or approaches to problems.
- Reading Comprehension
- Understanding written sentences and paragraphs in work-related documents.
- Service Orientation
- Actively looking for ways to help people.
- Speaking
- Talking to others to convey information effectively.
- Active Learning
- Understanding the implications of new information for both current and future problem-solving and decision-making.
- Active Listening
- Giving full attention to what other people are saying, taking time to understand the points being made, asking questions as appropriate, and not interrupting at inappropriate times.
Expand more skills (29)
- Complex Problem Solving
- Identifying complex problems and reviewing related information to develop and evaluate options and implement solutions.
- Coordination
- Adjusting actions in relation to others' actions.
- Judgment and Decision Making
- Considering the relative costs and benefits of potential actions to choose the most appropriate one.
- Monitoring
- Monitoring/Assessing performance of yourself, other individuals, or organizations to make improvements or take corrective action.
- Social Perceptiveness
- Being aware of others' reactions and understanding why they react as they do.
- Writing
- Communicating effectively in writing as appropriate for the needs of the audience.
- Instructing
- Teaching others how to do something.
- Time Management
- Managing one's own time and the time of others.
- Learning Strategies
- Selecting and using training/instructional methods and procedures appropriate for the situation when learning or teaching new things.
- Management of Personnel Resources
- Motivating, developing, and directing people as they work, identifying the best people for the job.
- Persuasion
- Persuading others to change their minds or behavior.
- Systems Evaluation
- Identifying measures or indicators of system performance and the actions needed to improve or correct performance, relative to the goals of the system.
- Mathematics
- Using mathematics to solve problems.
- Negotiation
- Bringing others together and trying to reconcile differences.
- Operations Monitoring
- Watching gauges, dials, or other indicators to make sure a machine is working properly.
- Science
- Using scientific rules and methods to solve problems.
- Systems Analysis
- Determining how a system should work and how changes in conditions, operations, and the environment will affect outcomes.
- Operation and Control
- Controlling operations of equipment or systems.
- Quality Control Analysis
- Conducting tests and inspections of products, services, or processes to evaluate quality or performance.
- Equipment Selection
- Determining the kind of tools and equipment needed to do a job.
- Management of Material Resources
- Obtaining and seeing to the appropriate use of equipment, facilities, and materials needed to do certain work.
- Operations Analysis
- Analyzing needs and product requirements to create a design.
- Troubleshooting
- Determining causes of operating errors and deciding what to do about it.
- Management of Financial Resources
- Determining how money will be spent to get the work done, and accounting for these expenditures.
- Technology Design
- Generating or adapting equipment and technology to serve user needs.
- Programming
- Writing computer programs for various purposes.
- Equipment Maintenance
- Performing routine maintenance on equipment and determining when and what kind of maintenance is needed.
- Installation
- Installing equipment, machines, wiring, or programs to meet specifications.
- Repairing
- Repairing machines or systems using the needed tools.
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