Your nursing profession isn’t the type of career where you earn a degree, learn a few skills, and be done with it. Instead, it’s a constantly progressing field with discoveries emerging every day. More importantly, the scope of this profession encompasses many areas, including health prevention, health promotion, caring for the sick, disabled, elderly, and even communities.
In the healthcare sector, a nurse’s role is diverse. Nurses provide care, support, and comfort to patients and their families by helping them understand the emotions their loved ones feel during illness. In addition, they advocate for health campaigns and educate their patients on avoiding disease and injury.
Healthcare continues to provide career advancement opportunities to those willing to grow professionally. Although there are several ways to advance your nursing career, first, you must understand what’s driving your decision.
Listed below are the seven best reasons for you to advance your nursing profession.
1. New Job Opportunities
Several nurses are interested in taking on leadership roles. While some wish to pursue the administrator aspect of the healthcare industry, others are more concerned with its academic realm. All nurses start their careers by working in the same healthcare setting, but with time and experience, they discover their areas of expertise.
Pursuing an advanced degree opens doors to new career possibilities, but most nurses who wish to pursue higher education struggle to balance studies and jobs. Thanks to the advancing technology, they can enroll in CCNE accredited online MSN programs that offer flexible class hours. These programs allow nurses to acquire knowledge and skills and simultaneously practice them in their work setting. After completing the program, students can take part in the management and clinical roles.
With multiple options, it may get challenging to choose a profession. Here are a few advanced nursing occupations that are rewarding financially and career-wise. You can pick one of these based on your career objectives.
- Nurse practitioner
- Nurse manager
- Clinical nurse specialist
- Nurse educator
- Nurse anesthetist
- Health policy nurse
2. Better Income Potential
Advanced nursing jobs, including those listed above, have higher responsibilities and expectations. Greater responsibilities result in higher salaries so that these jobs can be much more lucrative than average registered nursing. Your salary will likely vary based on experience, type of healthcare setting, and the geographical region where you’re employed. Regardless of these minor initial setbacks, your potential for earning a better income improves substantially with advanced jobs.
So, if the motivation for furthering your nursing career lies in having a high-paying job, you’re on the right track.
3. Greater Job Satisfaction
Another reason to advance your nursing career may be to achieve greater job satisfaction. More often than it’s acknowledged, registered nurses experience burnout after caring for patients for several years. Several factors can contribute to this burnout, including working long hours, dealing with constant patient influx, handling stressful situations, and emotional stress. All these affect the quality of work a nurse performs and may not provide them with the same job satisfaction it did at the beginning of their career. To cure this feeling and get back into the game once again, nurses need a change of pace. Although advanced nursing jobs are by no means easy, the shift in responsibilities can vastly bolster up your enthusiasm for nursing.
4. Well-aware and Informed
The healthcare industry is evolving at an unimaginable pace. It’s imperative to pursue an advancing career to keep up with these rapid changes and stay current with new developments. A graduate-level program can help you refresh your knowledge and learn new techniques. You can even acquire skills and competencies to help you in multiple job roles. For example, if you want to learn more about heart-related problems, you can go online and earn an ACLS certification, which can make you more qualified for the job.
Working in a clinical environment requires thinking quickly and providing out-of-the-box solutions. Keeping abreast of advancing developments, tools, and procedures can provide you with a wealth of ideas to assist you in critical times.
5. Systematic Changes
The job capacity of a registered nurse only allows them to follow procedures and protocols that exist in the healthcare system. Sometimes, these systems aren’t all-inclusive and often lack various components. Since nurses carry out multiple roles in any healthcare setting, they understand the system better than most professionals of the same facility. Unfortunately, they don’t have the authority or expertise to bring about the changes they think are essential.
Amending a system is not easy, but it is often vital. If you wish to update how a healthcare system is being run, you must be competent enough to implement these modifications. Advancing your career can provide you with this opportunity, mainly if you pursue a job that shoulders leadership roles.
6. Boost Patient Confidence
The first step toward getting better for any patient is believing they can do it.
Continuing professional development will enhance your professional image and improve the reputation of your place of employment. A hospital or medical facility that employs qualified health professionals is where patients prefer to go for their treatment. Knowing that they’re in the best hands, they tend to recover much quicker and better.
Your patient can fully trust you and have confidence in your abilities to perform the job in the best possible way. With more brilliant knowledge and skills, your standing in the medical world will allow patients to seek you out instead of the other way round.
7. Skill Development
Some nurses may choose to advance their careers because they want to gain new skills. Staying at the top in any medical field always requires you to be open to learning. There’s no such thing as overachievement. By developing more skills, you can better cater to your patients’ needs and help them in a greater capacity.
Training in medical schools will provide you with the necessary skills, but there is a lot more to uncover. For an advancing career, you must develop empathy, resilience, compassion, time management, stress management, and above all, communication.
Conclusion
If you’re looking for reasons to pursue an advancing in your nursing profession or career, chances are you’re already considering it. However, before enrolling in a program, plan your career advancement. Identify the driving forces behind your decision and what motivates you to keep growing professionally. These reasons are vital to determining where you must focus your efforts, whether patient satisfaction, more income, significant job opportunities, or changing the system. Familiarizing yourself with your ambitions will give you a better idea of where you would like to make your impact the most.