How much of your career do you have planned out? No, seriously.
It may surprise you to know that most nurses have never really thought about their career in terms of a plan, but when you think about it, doesn’t it make sense to have a strategy for your career? With a clear direction, you can arguably achieve more, which means making the most out of your career as a nurse.
This post explores how to develop and execute a successful nursing career plan so you can map out your path to success.
Your Career Goals as a Nurse
The first step in developing a career plan for nursing is to analyze your professional development goals and determine the path you want to travel. This is an essential step because your path will be largely decided by your professional development goals.
It’s always good to have some goals that you can work towards on a regular basis. You’ll find that achieving these goals will help shape the remainder of your career because it’ll give you an idea of what type of nurse you want to be.
Nursing career goals can vary in every nurse’s career. There are so many different roles a nurse can choose to perform that it’s nearly impossible to plan a career in advance because of the vast number of options.
You may want to progress into supervisory roles like nursing administration, leadership, clinical documentation, or working with other nurses on a team. You may also want to focus on technical skills such as pharmacology, utilization review, and evidence-based practice improvement.
What about your future? Career plans for nurses can take two different paths: linear or nonlinear. Linear plans refer to a path where you stay in one place with the same position and title for many years until retirement.
What Kind of Qualities Do You Need to Achieve Your Professional Goals?
After identifying your professional goals, it’s time to consider the qualities that you need in order to achieve them.
For example, suppose you are interested in pursuing advanced practice roles such as advanced clinical documentation or leadership. In that case, you will have to develop certain skills such as leadership skills, clinical documentation expertise, and communication skills, as well as taking advanced education programs like a DNP nursing program.
Developing competencies for the nursing profession is a must because the more competencies you develop throughout your career, the more effective and versatile a nurse you can become.
It’s important to also have an understanding of different aspects of every discipline so you can identify which areas of nursing best suit your needs.
Identifying Goals & Objectives
The next step in developing a nursing career plan is to identify your professional goals and objectives.
What do you want for yourself? Where do you see yourself in ten years? What types of nursing roles do you want to perform? These are some of the questions that you need to ask yourself.
Once you’ve identified your career goals, it’s time to develop some objectives that reflect the goals you’ve set. These objectives can be used as guidelines for setting up your plan because they define what exactly it is that you want out of your career path.
Setting Yourself Apart From the Rest of the Competition
Another important concept to understand is that nursing has its own unique set of competencies that sets it apart from other professions.
The most common ones are:
- Ability to learn and learn quickly
- Ability to multitask, organize, prioritize, and problem solve
- Mental toughness and resilience to persist through adversity
It’s important to develop an action plan for developing your skills so you can set yourself apart from the rest of the pack. To do this, you need to understand what skill development will help you achieve your career goals.
Planning For the Future
After doing all of the above, it’s time to develop a career plan for nursing. This can be achieved by planning your goals, objectives, and actions you need to take to achieve these goals and objectives.
Once you’ve got your action plan set up, it’s time to execute. It may sound a little overwhelming at first, but once you break it down into smaller steps and make sure you’re completing them on a regular basis, you’ll find that everything will fall into place.
You should make sure that your actions are realistic so that if something goes wrong during your career, then you still have the ability to repair and pick yourself back up again because this is a marathon, not a sprint.
Putting Your Plan Into Action
Once you have devised your plan and know how you want to progress in nursing, it’s time to put it into action. If you’ve decided you want to switch specialisms, start by enrolling in an additional program or sign up for placements in that area to develop your skills. If you’re going to progress your career as a nurse, you need to be willing to always be learning, both on and off of the job. If you’re equipped with the knowledge and skills you need, you will be able to succeed.
Conclusion
If a nursing career is for you, then you need to be prepared. To develop a career plan, you need to think about the skills you have and the skills you need to acquire to be a success. Knowing this information will help you to establish your professional goals as you will have a clear idea of what you need to focus on to progress. If your ultimate career goal is to be at the very highest level of nursing, you should research the educational programs you will need to take to achieve this. The higher your education level, the higher the salary you will be able to earn. While many people might be happy to go with the flow when it comes to their career, having a defined goal will help you to focus and achieve your dreams in life.
