The Datum Report

Occupation 2234 · Professional occupations

Registered nurse practitioners

Half of full-time registered nurse practitioners in the UK earn more than £46,069 a year, and half earn less.

Registered nurse practitioners provide nursing care for the sick, injured and others in need of such care, assist medical doctors with their tasks and also provide care independently, including diagnosing patients, the ordering and interpretation of tests, the determination of treatment and prescription of medication.

How people enter it

Qualification as a nurse is via a diploma or degree course, both of which are provided by universities, or through an apprenticeship. Courses comprise both theoretical and practical work, including placements in hospital and community settings. To become an advanced nurse practitioner significant experience and qualification to a postgraduate level is usually required.

What the work involves

• assists medical doctors and works with other healthcare professionals to deal with emergencies and pre-planned treatment of patients
• manages own case load
• interviews and diagnoses patients, orders tests and interprets results and determines appropriate treatments
• monitors patient’s progress, administers drugs and medicines, applies surgical dressings and gives other forms of treatment
• plans duty rotas and organises and directs the work and training of ward and theatre nursing staff
• plans, manages, provides and evaluates nursing care services for patients, supervises the implementation of nursing care plans

Also called

Health care practitioner · Mental health practitioner · Practitioner (nursing)

What it pays

How pay has changed

Median gross annual pay for registered nurse practitioners, full-time employees, 2023 to 2025. Each point is that year's ASHE April snapshot as published — revisions are not backfilled into earlier years, and a year ONS withheld is a gap rather than a joined line.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Year-on-year change

The change from each year to the next, in per cent, computed from the figures in the chart above — so the two cannot disagree.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Pay by region

Median gross annual pay for full-time employees, ranked, against the UK figure. 11 of 11 regions are published: ONS withholds a cell where the survey sample cannot support it, and those are shown as gaps rather than dropped — an absent region is not a region without the work in it.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Period 2025. Table

Every regional figure

ONS does not publish occupational pay below region. Cells the survey could not support are shown as withheld, with its reason — adding a region split to a specific occupation leaves roughly a tenth of cells publishable.

Common questions

Classified alongside this

Midwifery nurses · Other registered nursing professionals · Registered children's nurses · Registered community nurses · Registered mental health nurses · Registered specialist nurses