

Nursing Careers Overview
At UCLA Health, you can transform the patient experience—and your career. As a nurse here, you’ll work in a supportive and collaborative environment featuring the latest in innovation. It’s all you need to reach new heights of patient care.
You can use your expertise, compassion, and kindness to deliver personalized care and change the future for our patients—and for yourself. Working with world-class colleagues in a supportive and collaborative environment, you’ll drive the right interventions, alleviate suffering with acts of kindness, and ensure the best outcomes for every patient, every time.
Join us to build an exceptional career with a health care system that’s consistently ranked among the best in the country, while enjoying the kind of lifestyle that’s only available in one of America’s foremost cities. Explore opportunities in a wide range of specialties, including Oncology, Neurology, and Cardiac floors, as well as Critical Care, Perinatal Services, Pediatrics, and a host of other areas.
Critical Care
Greatness is defined when seconds count and lives are at stake. At UCLA Health, you can use your strength, compassion, and desire to learn to make a difference in critical moments.
We offer several ICU settings for nursing. Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center allows our nurses to focus on one particular specialty, while UCLA Medical Center, Santa Monica, provides the chance to care for a wide variety of ICU patients in our Medical/Surgical Adult ICU.
The Critical Care units at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center include the Cardiothoracic Intensive Care Unit, the Coronary Care Intensive Care Unit, the Medical Intensive Care Unit, the Neurosurgery/Trauma Intensive Care Unit, and a Transplant/Surgical Intensive Care Unit.
Medical/Surgical Specialty Units/Telemetry
Providing the best in patient care means serving a diverse patient population with specialized attention. At UCLA Health, you can use your focused expertise to help our patients move through the often-difficult stages of recovery.
Patients from all over the globe are referred to UCLA Health. As a Medical/Surgical nurse, you will have the opportunity to work on challenging and rewarding cases as you continue to build your nursing skills.
Medical & Surgical Specialty/Telemetry units at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center include the Gonda Observation Unit; the Medical Telemetry Unit; the Cardiac Observation Unit; the Cardiac Surgery Unit; the Neuroscience and Stroke Unit; the Hematology and Stem Cell Transplant Unit; the Clinical Translational Science Institute; the General Surgery Units for Gyn-Onc, Trauma, Head and Neck and Urology; the Liver Transplant Unit; the Vascular/Reconstructive Plastics/Orthopedics/Epilepsy Unit, and a Neurological Rehabilitation and Research Unit.
UCLA Medical Center, Santa Monica, offers an outstanding Orthopedics Unit, a Medical Unit, a General Surgery Unit, a Solid Oncology Unit, a Geriatric Unit, and a Cardiology Intermediary Care Unit.
Perinatal
At UCLA Health, you can provide the best birthing experience for every mother and her family. Your expertise will ensure mother and baby get the best in leading-edge care.
Nurses who choose Perinatal Services at UCLA Health have the opportunity to grow professionally and personally. Whether it’s a setting with high-risk patients or less complicated cases, you’ll work with world-class colleagues in an atmosphere of learning and support, all geared toward delivering the best outcomes every time.
The BirthPlace at UCLA Medical Center, Santa Monica and at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Westwood, are Southern California’s most comprehensive maternity centers, offering advanced high-risk specialized perinatal care.
Each BirthPlace offers private rooms along with a wide range of services to make the birthing experience an event to cherish. We use the latest proven technology in a serene, patient-oriented setting to ensure a safe and comfortable experience for mom, baby and the entire family.
Pediatric Care
You can use your skills to help put smiles back on the faces of our youngest and most fragile patients. At UCLA Health, you’ll join a team that’s empowered and equipped to make a lasting impact on young lives.
UCLA Mattel Children’s Hospital is one of the world’s preeminent institutions for pediatric research, teaching, and care. It features a Level 3 NICU, a Pediatric Intensive Care Unit and a multispecialty Acute Pediatrics Unit.
UCLA Medical Center, Santa Monica, has expanded its services to pediatric patients with the addition of a 26-bed general pediatrics unit. We also have a 16-bed Level 2 NICU and a Pediatric Intensive Care Unit to help ensure that our smallest charges have all they need to recover.
Operative Services
At UCLA Health, we have a wide variety of ways for you to build an exceptional career as an OR Nurse. Within our Magnet®-designated, award-winning hospitals, you can contribute your knowledge and expertise in such areas as the OR (Operating Room), the PTU (Procedure Treatment Unit), the PACU (Post Anesthesia Care Unit), and the Surgical Observation Unit. No matter where you serve, you’ll be able to deliver life-changing experiences for our patients and their families.
As an OR nurse here, you’ll take on exciting challenges with a diversity of high-acuity cases, while working with some of the most accomplished professionals, advanced technology and surgical robotics to be found anywhere. More than that, you’ll benefit from a supportive, empowering environment that will enable you to learn and grow like never before. Your professional and personal development will be enriched through:
- PeriOperative Nurse Residency Program
- Clinical ladder program for leadership advancement
- Certification classes, test reimbursement, and certificate differential
Our world-class nursing practice is being continually enhanced in a number of ways, including:
- Evidenced Based Practice and Research development
- Commitment to strong teamwork
- Cutting-edge surgical services – transplant, cardio/thoracic, pediatrics, etc.
- Multiple support services to streamline your work
- Engaged and inspiring leadership and Just Culture
We are also making a positive impact on our community and our world through an exciting variety of key charitable initiatives, including community fundraisers, walks/runs, volunteering at shelters, medical missions, the “Adopt a Family” and “Heal the Bay” programs and more. In all of these ways, our people consistently embrace and live out our mission, vision, values and CICARE philosophy:
Introduce yourself with Integrity
Communicate with Teamwork
Ask with Discovery
Respond with Respect
Exit with Excellence
At Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, we have opportunities throughout our operative services include the OR, the PTU, the PACU and the Surgical Observation Unit. At UCLA Medical Center, Santa Monica, you can serve within the OR, the PTU, or the PACU. Within the Jules Stein Eye Institute, you can also work in the OR, the PTU, or the PACU.
If you’re looking for the opportunity to go beyond yourself, to reach higher that you thought you could and to achieve more than you imagined, we’d love to have you join us.
Emergency Services
The pace is fast and the challenges are great. But the rewards are even greater. As an ER Nurse at UCLA Health, you can use your expertise to help the critically ill or injured, while working in concert with some of the best professionals in the field. At our emergency facilities, we handle an extraordinary number of patient visits each year, and to ensure we honor our commitment to ongoing learning, we offer a customized ER training program for new grads and non-ER nurses.
Our Level I Trauma Center at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center is a Pediatric Trauma Center (PTC), a Certified Stroke Center, and a Pediatric Medical Center (PMC). It is also a designated LA County ST Elevation Myocardial Infarction (STEMI) Receiving Center (SRC).
The Nethercutt Emergency Department at UCLA Medical Center, Santa Monica, serves as a paramedic receiving facility for all patient populations and is a designated STEMI SRC, a Rape Treatment Center, and an Emergency Department Approved for Pediatrics.
Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital
You can provide comprehensive care for the mind and body. At UCLA Health, you’ll work with world-class colleagues at the leading psychiatric and behavioral health hospital in the western United States.
As one of the premier facilities of its kind, the Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital at UCLA Health provides comprehensive patient care, research and education in the fields of mental health and developmental disabilities. The hospital features an inpatient Adult Medical/Geriatric Psychiatry Unit, an Acute ICU, a Substance Abuse Adult Psychiatry Unit, and an Adolescent/Child Psychiatry Unit.
Ambulatory Care/Transplant Services
At UCLA Health, you can use your nursing expertise to help us continue setting the standard for the treatment of rare and difficult cases. Here, you’ll be part of a team that’s pioneering the future of transplant services.
Our pursuit of new techniques and medicines is advancing the medical and nursing field every day, while allowing us to treat the most complicated cases now. There are more than 100 different outpatient specialty clinics and nursing areas throughout UCLA Health. These clinics provide a comprehensive array of treatments and clinical services.
UCLA Health offers the largest transplant program in the world. Our broad spectrum of transplant therapy work includes adult heart and lung, pediatric heart, adult/pediatric liver and small bowel, adult kidney and pancreas, pediatric kidney, bone marrow, and hand.
Since 2007, we’ve also offered Operation Mend, a groundbreaking partnership among UCLA Health, the United States military and the Department of Veterans Affairs to help heal the wounds of war. Operation Mend provides advanced surgical and medical treatment, as well as comprehensive psychological-health support for post-9/11-era service members, veterans, and their families at no cost.
Other Nursing Services
You can use your nursing skills to improve health for patients in a wide range of areas. On a specialized nursing team at UCLA Health, you can help drive the right outcomes for every patient, every time.
There are so many ways to transform the patient experience and make a difference as a nurse. We have positions available on our Critical Care Transport Teams, Nursing Float/Resource Team, and our interdisciplinary Clinical Systems Team (CST), which serves as a liaison between the clinical and technology staff.





Affiliated Hospitals
- California Rehabilitation Institute
- Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
- Community Memorial Hospital Ventura
- Encino Hospital Medical Center
- Good Samaritan Hospital
- Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital
- Los Robles Hospital & Medical Center
- Multiple Skilled Nursing Facilities
- Northridge Hospital Medical Center
- Olive View Medical Center
- Providence Little Company of Mary Medical Center
- Providence St. John’s Health Center
- Providence Tarzana Medical Center
- Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center
- St. Johns Oxnard
- St. Johns Pleasant Valley
- Torrance Memorial Medical Center
- UCLA Medical Center, Santa Monica
- West Hills Hospital & Medical Center/Grossman Burn Center
- West Los Angeles VA Medical Center