Jobs / Healthcare / 29-1141.03
Critical Care Nurses
Provide specialized nursing care for patients in critical or coronary care units.
- US jobs
- 3,379,720 (SOC 29-1141 group, "Registered Nurses")
- Median wage
- $97,550 a year
- Job family
- Healthcare
Can agents do the work of critical care nurses?
We read the evidence at the level of the job family, Healthcare:
- Task levelPartialOne benchmark, from early 2025. On Stanford's MedAgentBench, where agents do clinical tasks in a simulated electronic health record, the best recorded model completes 69.7% of tasks (Claude 3.5 Sonnet v2). It has no maintained leaderboard, so newer models are not measured. No benchmark in our collection tests work with patients.
- Project levelPartialOnly adjacent evidence. GDPval includes nurses among its 44 occupations. OpenAI reports that GPT-5.5's deliverables won or tied against professionals' work in 84.9% of comparisons across all occupations. No benchmark in our collection tests clinical work over days, such as managing a patient's care.
Benchmarks for the job family
These cover work in healthcare, not always this occupation's tasks.
- 1846 EloClaude Opus 5.5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort, Default Fallback) · 23 Sep 2026Unrated
Typical tasks
From O*NET 31.0. Core tasks first. Few of these tasks have a benchmark today.
- Evaluate patients' vital signs or laboratory data to determine emergency intervention needs.
- Monitor patients for changes in status and indications of conditions such as sepsis or shock and institute appropriate interventions.
- Administer medications intravenously, by injection, orally, through gastric tubes, or by other methods.
- Monitor patients' fluid intake and output to detect emerging problems, such as fluid and electrolyte imbalances.
- Prioritize nursing care for assigned critically ill patients, based on assessment data or identified needs.
- Compile and analyze data obtained from monitoring or diagnostic tests.
- Conduct pulmonary assessments to identify abnormal respiratory patterns or breathing sounds that indicate problems.
- Assess patients' pain levels or sedation requirements.
- Collaborate with other health care professionals to develop and revise treatment plans, based on identified needs and assessment data.
- Document patients' medical histories and assessment findings.
- Collect specimens for laboratory tests.
- Set up and monitor medical equipment and devices such as cardiac monitors, mechanical ventilators and alarms, oxygen delivery devices, transducers, or pressure lines.
Other job titles for this occupation (38)
Certified Critical Care Nurse · Critical Care Nurse Practitioner · Critical Care Registered Nurse (CCRN) · ICU Critical Care NP (Intensive Care Unit Critical Care Nurse Practitioner) · ICU Nurse (Intensive Care Unit Nurse) · Intensive Care Unit Registered Nurse (ICU RN) · Newborn ICU RN (Newborn Intensive Care Unit Registered Nurse) · Nurse · Pediatric Critical Care Nurse Practitioner · Staff Nurse · CCU RN (Cardiac Care Unit Registered Nurse) · CCU RN (Coronary Care Unit Registered Nurse) · CCU RN (Critical Care Unit Registered Nurse) · Critical Care Nurse (CCN) · Critical Care Nurse Specialist · Critical Care Unit Nurse · CVICU RN (Cardiac ICU Registered Nurse) · CVICU RN (Cardiovascular Intensive Care Unit Registered Nurse) · ER RN (Emergency Room Registered Nurse) · ICU Travel RN (Intensive Care Unit Travel Registered Nurse) · Intensive Care Registered Nurse (Intensive Care RN) · Neonatal Critical Care Nurse · Neonatal Intensive Care Nurse · Neuro ICU RN (Neuro Intensive Care Unit Registered Nurse) · Neuro ICU RN (Neurological Intensive Care Unit Registered Nurse) · Neuro ICU RN (Neuroscience Intensive Care Unit Registered Nurse) · NICU RN (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Registered Nurse) · PCU RN (Progressive Care Unit Registered Nurse) · Pediatric Critical Care Nurse · PICU RN (Pediatric Intensive Care Registered Nurse) · PICU RN (Pediatric Intensive Care Unit Registered Nurse) · Progressive Care Nurse · Registered Nurse (RN) · Step Down RN (Step Down Registered Nurse) · Step-Down Nurse · Telemetry Nurse · Trauma RN (Trauma Registered Nurse) · Vascular Nurse