How to Advance in the Nursing Profession

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There’s nothing you love more than nursing people back to full health. It’s a good job, then, that you are a nurse!

Having a job that you love doesn’t mean that you have to settle for the position that you currently hold, though. For instance, if you enjoy working with the elderly, maybe you want to consider Aged Care Jobs, Become a Care Worker with Care For Family. There are plenty of opportunities for you to advance in the nursing field, and there’s nothing holding you back from doing so.

You’re not going to advance in your career, however, if you aren’t willing to put in the hard work that is required to do so. What does this hard work entail? Read on to find out.

Earn an advanced degree

In order to advance in the nursing profession, you need to build on the bachelor’s education that you received when you were training to become a registered nurse. Specifically, this means heading back to university or college and taking a Master of Science in Nursing — Family Nurse Practitioner degree.

As a dedicated nurse, the last thing that you want to do is take on something that is going distract you from your day-to-day nursing role — make no mistake about it, if you take it on in a traditional classroom-based environment, an advanced degree course of this intense nature will do just that. It is for this reason why you should seek to take an online MSN FNP program. By going down this untraditional yet highly popular route with your learning, you will be able to study and complete coursework in your own time. You won’t have to spend your evenings cramped up in some night-school classroom after just coming off the back of a 12-hour shift, you’ll be able to sit down in the comfort of your own home and learn at your own pace.

Get certified in other areas

With your brand new degree grade planted firmly on your resume, you will be able to apply for certification in other nursing areas. Areas that you could consider in this instance include:

Family Nurse Practitioner

Nurse Anaesthetists

Nurse-Midwives

Nurse Specialists

You could even branch out of the hospital, and go down the Legal Nurse Consulting route. On this particular career path, you would be tasked with consulting with attorneys, juries, and judges in a bid to ensure that medical malpractice compensation is awarded to those that deserve it — your medical expertise could, in this instance, be the deciding factor in stopping fraudulent claims from being processed.

Act like a leader in your workplace

In order to catch the eye of any superiors who may have the power to promote you further on down the line, you have to start acting like a leader in your workplace as soon as you possibly can. This will show them that you are willing to go the extra mile to ensure good patient practice, and it will prove to them that you have what it takes to help better the performance of others.

In order to find success as a leader in your place of work, you should:

• Never compromise your values in order to lead — doing so will prove that you are easily swayed, and that is definitely not a character of a leader
• Communicate with all manner of people on all manner of levels, from the head of surgery to the new intern
• Do your utmost best to ensure that everybody that you talk to or treat, whether it’s your colleagues or your patients, are happy with your performance

Get networking

The larger your network, the more chance you will have of advancing in your career. Why? Because you will have more people to vouch for you when potential employees seek to find out if you are the right fit for the position they have available. You should, then, treat networking with the seriousness that it deserves.

Unfortunately, however, what with the long hours that you work, finding the time to network is not always going to be an easy task. You don’t have the time to be able to head to many job fairs and healthcare association meetings, which leaves you to wonder… what are you do in this situation? Fear not, as your long hours do not necessarily have to bring your dreams of networking your way to success to an abrupt end. There’s always the Internet, you know. By setting up a LinkedIn site for yourself, for instance, you can get in touch with all manner of healthcare professionals via your smartphone. When it comes to setting up such a site, though, just makes that everything about it is professional — an unprofessional LinkedIn will kill your chances of successfully networking via the web like nothing else.

Expand your nursing skillset

In order to prove that you have what it takes to take on a multitude of different tasks at any one time, you need to get to work right away in expanding your current skillset. To do this, you should attempt to pitch in with different areas around your workplace that aren’t traditionally departments that you practice in. You could, for instance, inquire about the possibility of assisting the surgeons in their next minor surgical task. Or, you could ask to sit on your ward’s reception for a time. By taking on roles that you aren’t used to, you will garner a better understanding of what it takes to provide care of the utmost quality.

The nursing profession is one where growth and career advancement is always achievable. You’re not going to climb the ladder in this industry, however, if you don’t put the work in that is required to do so. You have to head back to university or college and earn an advanced degree, you have to aim for certification in new areas, you have to act like a leader, you have to build your network, and you have to expand your skillset whenever and however you can.

Most importantly of all, you have to treat each new patient with the same renewed enthusiasm. If your passion for the job were to ever waver, you would make advancing in the nursing career a far more arduous task for yourself.

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