As a professional, registered, and practicing nurse, you are absolutely to be wholly commended on choosing to dedicate your working life to such a selfless, stressful, and often emotionally draining career. Naturally and entirely understandably, the majority of nurses are always on the proverbial lookout for new professional opportunities, experiences, and career progression windows.
So, whether you have already been working in a particular nursing specialism for a length of time and are now wanting a change, or else have yet to choose a particular specialty, then you have certainly come to the right place.
Here, for your information and reading pleasure, are six of the best ways to develop your nursing career while still practicing.
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Apply to Work in Different Areas of the Hospital
One of the best and simpler ways of expanding your career prospects in terms of your professional nursing career is to start applying for work in different areas of the hospital to where you are usually stationed. Naturally, it is likely, should you choose to do this, that you will be taking on an extra shift in addition to your current responsibilities in your own ward.
Obviously, every single hospital and medical institute is different. However, they do usually follow the same basic setup in terms of the various wards. Other types of nursing jobs within a general hospital setting include:
Neuroscience
Neuroscience nurses, often referred to by medical professionals as ‘neuro nurses,’ solely concern themselves with diagnosing and treating the nervous system of the human body. Neuro nurses treat patients who have suffered trauma to the brain, the spine, or other areas of the central nervous system, and as well as providing rehabilitation and daily care, they also work on educating and preparing ongoing treatment plans too.
Rheumatology
Nurses who work in the rheumatology section of the hospital deal with diseases and illnesses that affect the muscles or joints, causing them to become inflamed by conditions such as myositis, Lyme disease, Rheumatoid arthritis, spondylitis, and fibromyalgia.
Post-Anesthesia Care
The PACU unit of the hospital sees post-anesthesia care nurses helping patients fully recover from both local and general anesthesia. This involves monitoring each individual one of their patients and guiding them to wake up and come to without any issues or complications, along with looking after such integral elements as pain management, draining of the catheters, managing surgical wounds, airway management, and fundamental life support operations.
Medi-Surgery
The most common type of nursing of all the different disciplines is medical-surgical nursing, and it’s likely where you first started out in your professional career as a nurse. Medi-surgical nurses create and monitor individual patients’ treatment plans and medical records, administer and monitor prescriptions and medications and provide round-the-clock care to their patients.
Labor & Delivery
The labor and delivery section of the hospital does exactly what it says on the proverbial tin and is concentrated around the safe and happy delivery of babies on a daily basis.
Not only do labor and delivery nurses help the baby to be born, they also look after and care for the mother in terms of preparing them for life as a new mom.
Applying to your manager or mentor to work in another, separate area of the hospital to the one you are used to and have become familiar with is a fantastic way to show your interest in progressing your career, as well as add to your personal and professional knowledge, skillsets and expertise.
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Join a Professional Nursing Organization
There is a myriad of excellent advantages for professional, practiced, and fully registered nurses to join a professional nursing organization and even more so if those particular nurses are professionals who want to progress their career.
Such benefits of joining a professional nursing organization in your local area include, but are in no way limited to, the following:
- Exclusive access and professional invitations for major nursing conventions to which you will often be granted access at a discounted price or otherwise be invited there entirely for free. Not only will you be able to learn a great deal from attending such conventions, but you will also be able to start building professional connections and networks
- Certification for your commitment and professional aptitude to your vocational career as a nurse is guaranteed to open more professional proverbial doors.
- Heightened employment potential and invariable results from unification with a professional nursing organization
- Assistance, help, and support in your chosen field of specialist nursing
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Study for a Postgraduate Degree
When serious about wanting to progress in a professional career as a nurse, one of the most important, influential, and beneficial options would be to embark upon a rewarding, challenging, and incredibly fascinating BSN to NP program online, which will cement your passion and professional commitment to becoming a diverse and multi-skilled nurse.
There is a huge abundance of incredibly advantageous reasons why you should consider enrolling in such a program, including but not limited to the following:
- A higher potential to significantly improve patient treatment plans and ultimate outcomes due to the provision of higher level and more specialized care
- A substantial competitive advantage in terms of being awarded extra responsibilities and even being selected for greater nursing opportunities
- A way to improve your professional ability to meet the more demanding requirements of the healthcare system after the worldwide coronavirus pandemic
- Unique and unprecedented opportunities to travel, both across the length and breadth of this country and even internationally as a registered nurse
- An exceedingly high level of personal achievement and professional satisfaction
- Access to teaching opportunities, again, both in this country and overseas
- MSN and NP graduates have a much higher chance of being chosen for various nursing leadership roles and positions
- A maximized opportunity to earn significantly more than those nurses who only possess an undergraduate degree in the profession
- An ability to be choosier when it comes to picking your working hours and shift patterns and even the option of working less practical hours and dedicating more time to medical research
- Significantly improved compensation benefits and, frankly, much higher salaries.
- A plethora of different nursing specialisms will become available for you to choose your niche passion and unique interest in the field of nursing
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Search for a Nursing Residency Program
Competition to be accepted onto a nursing residency program, both in this country and internationally, is particularly tough, but if you are serious about it and equally as dedicated to your pursuit of expanding your nursing knowledge and expertise, then nursing residency programs are certainly the way to go.
The fundamental targets and goals of a nursing residency program are the following:
- Addressing and identifying certain gaps in an individual nurse’s clinical and practical knowledge
- Fostering professional growth continuously and consistently, as well as their professional development
- Improving the critical thinking of nurses as well as their decision-making skills in a clinical setting
- Reducing nursing staff turnover in addition to improving the overall treatment plans and care experienced and received by patients
Essentially, nursing residency programs are designed and in place to help recent graduates and brand-new nurses to naturally and seamlessly transition into clinical nursing practice. Therefore, there is a multitude of reasons why you should consider this particular pathway:
- A decrease in the experience of burnout, which can often be a problem for nurses
- An overall improvement in the standard of individual patient care
- A real boost to the confidence and aptitude of a nurse
- A reduction in staff turnover means stronger personal and professional connections
- Help in attending and arranging professional networking opportunities
- Assisting in the solving of complex medical problems that close friends and family members would have no professional knowledge in
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Seek a Professional Mentor
Having someone to look up to as a role model is something that can be incredibly welcoming, not to mention exceedingly beneficial in almost all aspects of life. Still, when it comes to the world of nursing, it is even more important to find a mentor – and one that you trust and respect.
If you do not currently have a nursing mentor, then it is strongly advisable to start looking for one as soon as your schedule allows. Not only can a mentor help shape and mold your career pathway, but they can also help you change your nursing specialism and generally help you get ahead of the game.
In addition, the presence of a nursing mentor also means that you always have someone on your side who will support you through whatever you are going through at work in a calm, professional, supportive, and confidential manner.
When looking for a nursing mentor, it is vital to find someone who is naturally encouraging, and an excellent listener. It’s also helpful to search for someone who you do not feel intimidated or patronized by, who is available when you need them, and, of course, reliable and trustworthy.
It is certainly worth enquiring at your current hospital or medical institution as to whether they offer an ‘in-house’ nursing mentorship program, and if they don’t, perhaps you could even suggest the idea. Nursing mentorship programs provide a multitude of benefits to the running of the hospital itself, including the provision of academic advice, clinical care support, emotional and psychological support for all the nurses, and career development, as well as nursing leadership opportunities.
In regards to the role of the nursing mentor, they should always follow these guidelines:
- Constantly and consistently striving to be as proactive as possible
- Keeping the communication between themselves and their mentee open and honest
- Providing feedback as and when necessary
- Maintaining professional practice
- The provision of advice for difficult situations
- Offering copious support for the increase of successful goals
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Look After Your Emotional Wellbeing
After the turbulence and turmoil resulting from the global coronavirus pandemic over the last two years and more – not to mention the troubling economic times faced by citizens of the United States and internationally – the general levels of emotional health and wellbeing in people across the world has taken a severe beating.
However, when it comes to nursing staff, especially those nurses who had admirably been working throughout the entirety of the pandemic up until now, it is even more important to recognize that their mental health will have inevitably suffered – sometimes to worryingly high levels of severity.
As a nurse yourself, it has never been more important to look after your own emotional health and being, as it would be impossible to conduct your professional roles, duties, and responsibilities to the best of your ability if you yourself are not feeling up to it. Additionally, in terms of progressing in your career, you cannot hope to achieve and move on to greater prospects if you are not in an emotionally strong and capable position.
There is a wide plethora of ways to ensure you are taking care of your mental health as a professional nurse, including the following:
Looking After Your `Body
When on shift, it is usually impractical and often quite impossible to eat healthily and at the correct times of the day, but spending just a little time on your days off to cook and prepare healthy and nutritious meals – which you can bring into work when you are working long hours – can help with this issue.
Try To Not Dwell On Work When You Are Not Working
Naturally, this piece of advice is substantially easier said than done, but do try not to dwell and focus on things that have happened at work – especially if they are particularly emotional and traumatic.
Take Your Breaks
It is so unbelievably common for hard-working nurses to simply forgo their breaks in favor of their patients or even their fellow colleagues. Still, you must look after your own body and mind so that you can provide the best possible levels of care to your patients. Taking your breaks when and where you can will provide the breathing space you need to collect your thoughts and rest your body before going back to the ward.
