Nurses spend a lot of time on the move and not much time with their feet up. A 12-hour shift, a 40-minute commute, a slow stretch at 3 a.m. Audio fills those gaps better than almost anything else, and the right show can turn that time into a clinical refresher, a career nudge, or just something that makes the last 2 hours go faster.
The 10 best nursing podcasts below are sorted by what you might need on a given day. Some days that means reviewing a system before you float. Some days it means career direction, and some days it means a story you can half-listen to on the drive home. The categories run from continuing education and specialty practice to career growth, burnout and wellness, industry news, and nurse life.
How we picked these podcasts
Each show on this list had to clear the same 3 checks before it earned a spot.
- Hosted by a nurse or produced by an organization with recognized clinical or accreditation credentials
- Currently publishing, so it is worth subscribing to
- Aimed at working nurses specifically, not a general healthcare or wellness audience
The result covers different specialties, career stages, and moods. A few of these are dense enough to take notes on. Others are best saved for the drive home.
Top podcasts for clinical skills and continuing education
If you want nurse podcasts for continuing education or a refresher on a condition you have not seen in a while, start here. These 3 lean instructional and reward active listening.
Straight A Nursing
Maureen Osuna, known to listeners as Nurse Mo, came up through intensive care unit (ICU) and post-anesthesia care unit (PACU) nursing before moving into nursing education. She releases episodes on Mondays and Thursdays.
Mo's Monday Minute hands you one thing you can use on your next shift. Thursdays go deep on a condition or a study strategy.
Straight A Nursing works well for both a student cramming for an exam and a nurse reviewing a system before floating, which makes it one of the best podcasts for nursing students who are already working.
AJN Off the Charts
The companion podcast to the American Journal of Nursing brings editors and article authors on to talk through recent research, policy shifts, and workforce issues.
Episodes tend to be short and evidence-focused, which is useful if you want to follow the literature without reading every issue cover to cover. Off the Charts is a reasonable substitute for the journal club your unit keeps meaning to start.
Elite Learning nursing CE podcasts
Elite Learning was among the first to turn nursing podcasts into accredited continuing education, and it runs a library of episodes rather than a single ongoing show.
Topics span med-surg, critical care, emergency nursing, pharmacology and medication safety, wound care, mental health, and infection prevention, as well as career episodes on certification, leadership, and salary negotiation. Episodes run from 30 minutes to just over an hour and are built around real clinical scenarios and interviews with nurse subject-matter experts.
Listen for free through any podcast app. Claiming the contact hours happens separately through Elite Learning, and because the American Nurses Credentialing Center accredits the provider, those hours count toward license renewal in most states.
Top nursing podcast for specialty practice
Most shows on this list work for any nurse. This one goes narrow on purpose, and it goes deep.
The Nurse Anesthesia Podcast
Three certified registered nurse anesthetists (CRNAs) host this one: Jeremy Heiner, Sass Elisha, and Mark Gabot, all doctorally prepared and all fellows of the American Association of Nurse Anesthesiology. Episodes come out roughly every 2 weeks.
Coverage runs to airway management, crisis scenarios, pharmacology, and case management for specific procedures. Recent episodes have addressed EEG-guided anesthesia depth, new international guidelines on preoperative fasting, and evidence on holding ACE inhibitors before surgery.
The Nurse Anesthesia Podcast is written for CRNAs and nurse anesthesia students, though critical care nurses will find most of it useful. The recurring question-and-answer episodes make it one of the more useful clinical nursing podcasts for active review rather than passive listening.
Top nursing podcast for students and new grads
Students listen differently, often in short bursts between study blocks, so format matters as much as content.
The Nursing Podcast
Jon Haws is a critical care nurse who built NURSING.com to help students get through nursing school and pass boards, and the podcast is the free front door to it.
Episodes are short and concept-driven, which suits studying in the gaps between clinicals, and the archive is deep enough that most high-yield topics are already covered somewhere in it.
The Nursing Podcast is one of the more practical nursing podcasts for NCLEX prep, and new grads still building confidence get value from the same material.
Top nursing podcast for career growth
Clinical skill is only part of a long career. This one covers the part nobody teaches at the bedside: how to get seen and how to get promoted.
The Ambitious Nurse
Bonnie Meadows is a clinical nurse specialist and career coach, and the show is built around a specific problem: experienced nurses with the credentials and the graduate degree who still get passed over because nobody has taught them how to position themselves as leadership-ready.
Ambitious Nurse episodes cover visibility, self-promotion, and the strategy side of advancing that clinical competence alone does not solve. Meadows built the framework from her own stuck stretch, which is why it leans more toward coaching than commentary.
Top nursing podcast for burnout and wellness
Generic wellness advice lands badly when the stressor is a 6-patient assignment. This one is built around nurse-specific pressure instead.
Nurse Wellness Podcast
Dr. Wendy Garvin Mayo is a nurse practitioner who works as a stress management specialist, and the show reflects that focus. Episodes cover practical strategies for letting go of control, assessing where your life has fallen out of balance, and managing chronic stress before it worsens.
The back catalog spans more than 120 episodes and includes interviews with nurses about career transitions, leadership, and recovery from serious illness.
The current season follows Dr. Mayo’s work on building a statewide nurse wellness project in Connecticut, so start with the archive if you want the stress-management material rather than the origin story.
Top nursing podcasts for news and advocacy
Trade publications are one way to keep up with what is happening in the profession. These nursing news podcasts are the other, and both come at it from the floor rather than the boardroom.
Nurses Uncorked
Nurse Erica hosts this one, and her background covers more ground than most. She started as a certified nursing assistant straight out of high school, went through nursing school, and has since worked in pediatrics, adult acute care, long-term care, wound care, and hospice, with stints as a chief nursing officer, director of nursing, and nurse manager.
Nurses Uncorked takes current healthcare issues and works through them with a comedic angle rather than a clinical one, which makes it an easier way to keep up than reading trade press. Erica also brings the show to nursing strikes and rallies around the country, so episodes often report from the ground rather than commenting from a distance.
Nurse Talk
Nurse Talk has one of the longest runs in nursing audio. It started as a nurse-hosted radio show built on the idea that laughter is the best medicine, aired in major markets across the country, ran daily segments on SiriusXM, and won 3 National Communicators Awards along the way.
Episodes take on serious healthcare and labor topics without losing the humor, and the show has a long history with the nursing union world. Nurse Talk is a good pick if you want the profession's politics delivered by people who have worked the floor themselves.
Top nursing podcast for humor and nurse life
Not every episode has to teach you something. Sometimes you want to hear that someone else had the same shift you did.
Bedpan Banter
Nurse Mike hosts this one, and it is closer to sitting at the nurses' station than to a lecture. Episodes cover unfiltered stories from the floor, the emotional patient moments that stay with you, and the shifts that only become funny in hindsight, with the occasional practical takeaway.
Bedpan Banter is aimed at students, new grads, and experienced nurses who mostly want to feel seen, making it one of the better podcasts for night shift nurses looking for entertainment rather than coursework.
How to listen to nursing podcasts on shift
Most hospital units have unreliable signal somewhere, so download episodes over Wi-Fi before you leave rather than streaming on the floor. Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Pocket Casts all support offline playback and adjustable speed, which helps when you are working through a backlog.
A few nursing shows are built as accredited continuing education activities, including Elite Learning's, though you claim the hours through the provider rather than the podcast app itself. Check your state board requirements before counting listening time toward renewal.
Find your next nursing podcast
The right show depends on what the week has handed you. Clinical review before a float assignment, career strategy during a job search, or a story from someone else's shift on the drive home all serve different purposes, and there is no reason to pick just one. Start with the category that matches your current stretch and build the playlist from there.
And if the hosts on this list left you wanting more nurses worth following, read our roundup of famous nurses on TikTok next.
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