Nursing is a great career to get into if you want to do something more fulfilling and help your local community so check out these 3 Ways To Progress In A Nursing Career.
It’s especially well suited to moms because a lot of the skills that you gain as a parent are needed if you’re going to be a good nurse.
Things like patience, compassion, and time keeping skills are all essential if you’re going to be a nurse and parents master those skills when they’re raising their own families.
The only problem with nursing is that a lot of people don’t progress very far in their career.
There are opportunities for advancement but if you don’t know how to seek them out and what extra training you might need, it’s easy to end up staying in the same role for a long time.
Some people aren’t bothered about that because they love their work and they’re happy to carry on as they are.
But if you want to earn more money to support your family and get the opportunity to help people on a larger scale, you need to look at ways to move up the ladder. Once you are in a place to start applying for more advanced positions, it’s a good idea to look at this list of potential nursing interview questions and answers so that you are prepared to get the job that you want.
Image From Pixabay
If you’re just starting out in nursing or even if you’ve been doing it for a while but you want new challenges, these are some of the best ways to progress in your nursing career.
Invest In Education
You need to get some qualifications if you’re going to be a registered nurse but a lot of people make the mistake of thinking that once they’re qualified, that’s the end of their education.
But if you want to move forward, it’s important that you continue to invest in education.
A lot of the higher level positions in nursing like management or teaching will require you to have further education.
You’ll also need to get another degree if you want to specialize in certain areas of nursing, so it’s important that you are still studying.
In most cases, you can do your studies at the same time as working so you don’t have to go back into education full time.
There are a lot of higher level nursing positions, like a family practice nurse, for example, that require you to do another 3 or 4 years of training. You can also look at BSN programs which can get you into a nursing career.
It may seem like a lot but when you start asking questions like, how much do family nurse practitioners make, what duties do they have, and what are their working hours like, you’ll realize that it’s worth investing in that education.
A family nurse practitioner has a lot of the same duties as a doctor like diagnosing patients and coming up with treatment strategies so it gives you far more opportunities to help patients with their recovery.
You may also want to consider more specialized areas of nursing, like mental health, for example.
This is going to bring a lot of new challenges that you wouldn’t necessarily have dealt with on a standard ward and so you may need to do more training.
If you’re not willing to put more time into further education, it’s going to be difficult to move forward in your career.
Build A Network
You hear a lot about networking in the business world but people tend to assume that it doesn’t really apply to nursing, but that isn’t true.
It’s just as important that you build a good network of other nurses and medical professionals so you can learn new skills and explore different approaches to the day to day problems that you face at work.
This will benefit you in two ways; first off, it helps you to improve your skills and makes you a better nurse, which will make it a lot easier for you to get promotions or move into a different area when a job comes up.
Secondly, it puts you on the radar of senior people so when it comes to making a decision, they already know you and have some idea about your work, which is going to help you out when applying for jobs.
There are a few different ways that you can build a good network but the best way is to join certain groups.
Most states will have their own nursing association and you need to be a part of that.
You should also join the American Nurses Association as well.
By attending events that these associations hold and staying up to date with the latest news, you’ll be able to start building a network.
You should also try to network with people at your current job.
Having a good relationship with your superiors as well as other people that are working in different areas of the hospital because you can find out about new job opportunities.
Find A Mentor
Finding a good mentor is one of the best ways to progress in your career because they can give you good advice on how to improve your skills and seek promotions.
However, it’s important that you don’t try to force this relationship and you let it develop naturally over time.
The first step is to find somebody in a senior position that you look up to.
It’s best that you don’t choose somebody in your department, especially the person that you report to.
Instead, you should look for people working in other areas, particularly those departments that you might be interested in moving into in the future.
A lot of people in senior positions will have had a mentor of their own and they will respect somebody that is trying to further their career, so you don’t need to worry about approaching them.
It’s best to be upfront with them and tell them that you are looking for new opportunities and you need some advice.
Equally important that you respect the fact that they have their own job to do and you’re not constantly taking up their time with your questions, otherwise, you won’t forge a beneficial relationship with your new mentor.
Nursing is a big field and there are a lot of different opportunities for specializing and improving your career prospects but a lot of people don’t know where to start.
But if you follow these steps, you’ll be able to find the nursing career that you want.
Check out these 5 Fuss Free Ways to a Healthier Lifestyle.
