Progressing in your nursing career can be quite rewarding. Nurses advance their careers for various reasons, including pursuing new roles like nurse practitioner, midwife, manager, educator, and anesthetist. Since these new job positions have greater responsibilities, your earning potential also rises.
Nursing career advancement also leads to improved job satisfaction, especially if you experience general dissatisfaction or burnout, work long shifts, deal with high-stress conditions, feel compassion fatigue, or have high patient volumes. There are a few things you can do to advance your career. Here are five tips for advancing your nursing career.
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1. Consider furthering your education
Returning to college may require commitment and focus, which can be challenging for some nursing professionals. However, furthering your education can significantly impact your nursing profession curve. Advancing your education is one of the best ways to grow your nursing career. It can help you attain improved patient outcomes while enabling you to take on more responsibilities.
Education advancement is an excellent route to growing into a leadership role. It can also enable you to become a role model for new or less experienced nurses. Education programs, such as online DNP nurse practitioner programs, will allow you to offer better patient care while ensuring you’re better prepared to anticipate and handle bigger health needs.
2. Get a mentor
Mentorship is an essential consideration for nurses looking to advance their careers. Nurse mentors are a valuable tool for shaping your career and navigating the challenges like job dissatisfaction, stress, unsupportive work environments, and burnout you might face in your nursing profession. A good nurse mentor should be reliable, trustworthy, encouraging, available, an excellent listener, and a guide to your professional goals.
To make the most out of a mentorship relationship, you should be proactive, ask questions, keep communication lines open, seek feedback, take criticism positively, and be honest with your mentor. You can find a mentor internally via a formal program offered by your institution or externally by leveraging non-profit organizations or nursing associations.
3. Earn certifications
Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS), Pediatric Advanced Life Support (PALS), and Basic Life Support (BLS) certifications are a requirement for most healthcare professionals, like nurses working in urgent, emergency, or critical urgent care units or senior care facilities. While some certifications are a must-have, they can also let you pursue better-paying and more specialized positions.
Considering how intensive the healthcare industry is, you might struggle to find time in your busy schedule to earn these certifications. However, online nursing certification classes can help you get them at your own time and pace.
4. Join a professional nursing network
Professional networking is an excellent way to scout for better job opportunities while gaining knowledge and motivation from other nurses. Joining a professional network of nurses can help you meet and engage with other passionate and dedicated nurses to motivate you to grow your career. It lets you access your field’s latest practices, techniques, and advancements.
5. Consider specializing
When you specialize in a specific nursing field, your expertise level increases, job prospects improve, and it may lead to a fulfilling career. You can specialize in Adult Critical Care (CCRN), Family Nurse Practitioner (FNP), Progressive Care (PCCN), or other fields.
Endnote
Nursing career advancement enhances job satisfaction, increases job satisfaction, and opens up new job opportunities. Use these tips to advance your nursing career.