The Nursing Student's Guide to Bay Area Education and Careers

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By C.J. Gustafson, Nursing Schools.com Contributing Writer


The area often referred to as the Bay Area focuses around San Francisco Bay, a 500-square-mile body of water that indents into the California coastline. Sixteen California rivers feed into the bay, and ships from all over the world dock at more than forty deepwater piers around its shores. The Greater Bay Area includes nine counties: Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Solano, and Sonoma. The combined population of over six million makes the Bay Area the fifth largest metropolitan region in the United States. The hub of this area is the city of San Francisco, with just over 775,000 people and 47 square miles of land area.

San Francisco Bay Area, California The Bay Area's first European settlers were the Spanish who came from Mexico and established missions and military presidios at several locations in the region. The territory became part of the United States following the Mexican-American War, and the 1849 Gold Rush brought a wave of new settlers and businesses. In 1906, the Great Earthquake, which measured 8.25 on the Richter scale, sparked a fire that destroyed thousands of buildings in the area and killed over 3,000 people.

The area rebuilt and was an important part of the war efforts in the first half of the 20th century. New towns and cities developed, and the area became a top destination for newcomers of many backgrounds and cultures.

Bay Area Regions
Today the surrounding communities and counties are commonly divided into five separate areas. The North Bay, which includes Marin County, begins just across the Golden Gate Bridge. It is a land of hills and shoreline and is where the famous Sonoma and Napa wine country is located. Sausalito, which has the feel of a seaside Mediterranean community, is one of the most well-known towns in the North Bay region.

Across the eight-mile San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge is the East Bay, home to an important industrial area as well as a conglomeration of residential suburbs including Oakland, Berkeley, and Alameda. The University of California, Berkeley is known worldwide for innovations in business and technology.

The area between the South Bay and the City and County of San Francisco is known as The Peninsula. This area consists of a series of small cities and suburban communities along the Bay such as Palo Alto and Stanford University, San Mateo.

South of the Bay lies Silicon Valley and well-known towns such as San Jose and Santa Cruz. The rise in the technology industry has created a boom in the populations of these cities, and San Jose now has more residents than San Francisco.

Because the city of San Francisco remains the financial and cultural hub of the area, it is often referred to as its own separate region in the Bay Area. It has a wealth of unique features that make it one of the most famous and beloved cities in the world. As described by Larry Smith in The Boulevards Guide to San Francisco, "It's a city of neighborhoods -- a dozen mini-cultures, all with their own ways and means. Restaurants rule the social scene, providing remarkable diversity for the taste buds, though there's also no lack of bookstores, bars, music hot spots, not to mention the most spectacular urban views in the country. S.F. is a small but stylish metropolis with a titillating hum."

Nursing in the San Francisco Bay Area Great Hospitals & Top Pay Scales
San Francisco and the surrounding communities are also home to an amazing number of hospitals and clinics that provide employment opportunities for those in the health care field. The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) operates several medical centers and includes Moffitt Hospital, Long Hospital, and Mount Zion Medical Center. California Pacific Medical Center has several locations in the area, as does Kaiser Permanente Medical Center. Other hospitals include Laguna Honda Hospital, Chinese Hospital, Saint Francis Memorial Hospital, St. Luke's Hospital, St. Mary's MEDICAL CENTER, and San Francisco General Hospital.

According to Beatrice Yorker, RN, MS, JD, FAA, a professor at San Francisco State University and the director of the School of Nursing, "San Francisco has some of the best pay scales in the country. With UCSF, Stanford Medical Center, and many renowned hospitals this is a great place for nurses to be educated and then to work."

Outstanding Educational Facilities
And the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce states that, "More than 35 colleges and universities comprise the Bay Area's world-class educational and research facilities. The National Research Council (NRC) rates the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) and Stanford University as the two top-ranked graduate schools in the country. NRC also ranks programs in the biological and biomedical sciences at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) among the nation's best."

Students in these schools can train to become a Registered Nurse, Nurse Practitioner, or Legal Nurse. They can study Critical Care Nursing, Forensic Nursing, Hospice Care Nursing, Nursing Informatics, Midwifery and other related areas of specialization. Other possible career paths include Medical Researcher or Health Care Administrator.

Whether you are drawn to the sophistication and class of San Francisco or the more rural lifestyle of some of the outlying cities, the Bay Area has a wide variety of educational and employment options for those who have always dreamed of living on the West Coast. With some of the top schools and medical facilities in the country, it is a great place to start your career in nursing or a related field.

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