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Why It Is Important to Focus on Your Nursing Career

Why It Is Important to Focus on Your Nursing Career

You knew that you wanted a career in nursing for as long as you can remember, and now that you have your nursing career, it is important that you maintain it, and focus on it as much as possible. If you do not focus on your nursing career, your interest levels will drop, your attention may become affected, and then as a result of this lack of interest and desire shown, or not shown, you could find that your career could be in jeopardy. If you do not focus on your career and do not push it, you will never know what you could have achieved. You will end up frustrated at the lack of progress happening if you do not take control. Your career should complement your life, and it should leave you feeling fulfilled and happy. Missing warning signs and signals within your career could signal bigger problems, so always ensure that your nursing career remains one of your top priorities, no matter how used to it you are.

You Have Worked Hard to Get Where You Are

Starting a career in nursing is not easy. You have proved that you have earned your career on your own merit, but what does your self-worth look like. If you look at the amount of time and the effort you spent studying and learning to get where you are now, you will see that you undervalue what you do. When you undervalue, you actually undervalue the importance of your position and your role within the healthcare industry or within a specific company. When you look back at your times of studying, and you look back to your first few months or year as a nurse, do you appreciate how far you have come, and probably in a short timescale. When you appreciate and value just how hard it was to get to where you are now, you can then start looking at where you want to go in the future and why.

There is Room and Potential for Growth

You have reached where you wanted to, and you have done it in a very reasonable time frame, but did you know that there is still room and potential for growth. There are many areas that you can progress into, and you can even look at diversification. For example, if you are currently working in a busy accident and emergency ward, you might want to look at moving to a larger department. Or you might want to change tracks slightly and move into doing home care assistance in palm beach instead. Whatever you decide upon, it’s good to keep moving. However, the potential for growth within nursing is only limited by yourself. Lacking vision and lack of foresight will mean that you ultimately struggle to realize and take advantage of the room and potential growth you have available. If you are struggling to see where the potential lies, then try looking at your career from the outside and looking in.

The Industry is Constantly Changing

Losing focus on your career could be disastrous, especially in an industry that is always changing. You need to keep up with trends, developments, and new ways of working. If you are not focusing on your career, you are also not paying close attention to industry changes and new normal. Failing to follow protocol or even failing to pay attention to industry changes could mean you fall behind your colleagues and counterparts. Even if you only slide slowly, you will still slip, and you will struggle to regain your position within the workplace. If you fall behind colleagues, it can be very hard to catch up, especially while you are balancing a full-time career too. It is much easier and simpler to implement changes and adopt new ways of working when the industry changes, so do not sit back, be active, even be proactive to ensure that standards and expectations do not slip.

Don’t Lose Sight of Your Goals, Ambitions, and Targets

It is important that you set career goals, ambitions, and targets for yourself that you can achieve. If you do plan ahead and plan for what your future will look like, you will stay stagnant within your career, and you will struggle to push forward. When it comes to setting goals, you may find it beneficial to break them down into manageable chunks. For example, if you want to return to studying to fulfill the requirements for an RN to MSN degree, try and break the process down over a number of months or years, simply because it will make it much easier on you and make it more realistic and achievable.

When you take time out to regularly review your goals, targets, and ambitions, you can make sure that you are staying on track and that you are pushing forwards and progressing at a pace that is comfortable for you. When you keep track of your progress, and you monitor what you are doing, and by when, you can feel more rewarded, and you can feel a lot more satisfied with your progress.

The Opportunity to Become a Practitioner

Within your career, you will have many opportunities available to you, and one of these could come in the form of career progression. Progressing on from a nursing role can be a scary time, but one opportunity that you must pursue is the chance to become a Family nurse practitioner, or FNP. As an FNP, you get to stay hands-on with patients, but you also get to grow with local families and communities. The Family Nurse Practitioner Role Explained is similar to that of a doctor, being that you can administer medicine and care just as a doctor would, but you still get to maintain consistency with the patients and local communities that you already have. Training to be a family nurse practitioner can be done in around 3 years, so once you have made the commitment to progress and advance your career, it will not be long until you are in a new role.

Education is Always on the Horizon

Even if you have recently undertaken a program of study, it is important to remember that within your nursing career, education is key, and education is constant. Seeing learning as a constant within your professional life may take a little bit of getting used to, but once you are aware of why education is always needed, then you will begin to see the whole process in a different light, and you will not be as frustrated. Embracing education will allow you to make the most out of your career, and it will ensure that you always maintain clarity and focus on your career, where you want to go, and why.

Future Stability

If you fail to focus on your career, and you fail to progress within your career then you risk your job security and stability. As an employee you will be more valued if you hold up to date qualifications, and certificates. Being on-board with everything that is offered to you is important, to ensure that you remain valuable and valued for what you can bring to your role. When you invest time, and effort into your career you ensure that you are harder to replace (should your employer ever wish too). Future proofing your career is something that you should start focusing on, and prioritizing. 

Financial Rewards

A nursing career is not about the money, or the financial rewards, but having said that, they are important. If you are not fairly, or correctly paid for the work you do within your career you could end up feeling dissatisfied, and disinterested within your work, and this will lead to further unhappiness. When you decide to go for a promotion, or a change of direction, always ensure that the pay matches the job description. Of course, you will want to get the role, and then the responsibilities too, but, if the pay is not on par with what you need, or what you were expecting then you will not perform in the job as well as you can, or as well as you should.

Career Satisfaction

Do you still love nursing? And, do you still enjoy doing what you do every day? If you are not enjoying, or loving what you are doing then you will have no career satisfaction, and ultimately, this will lead you to dissatisfaction in other areas of your life. So, if you are not happy in your current role, start looking at what you can be doing, and what you want to be doing, and then start working back from your end goal. So, for example, if your end goal is to become a leader within nursing, or your goal is to become a family nurse practitioner, you need to establish what needs to happen to get you to that stage, and how many points you need to cross before you reach your end goal. When you break down a career goal it becomes both more realistic and achievable, and this is what you want, especially when you are pursuing it alongside your current job career within nursing.

About the author

Steven Ly

Steven Ly is the Startup Program and Events Manager at TheNextHint Inc. She recruits rockstar startups for all TC events including Disrupt, meetups, Sessions, and more both domestically and internationally. Previously, she helped produce Dreamforce with Salesforce and Next '17 with Google. Prior to that, she was on the advertising teams at both Facebook and AdRoll, helping support advertisers in North America and helped grow those brands globally. Outside of work, Priya enjoys Flywheel, tacos, the 49ers, and adventuring around the globe.

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