Want To Make A Difference To People’s Lives? Consider A Career In Nursing

There is nothing better in life than having complete and total job satisfaction. It is something that everyone wants but few of us seem ever to attain. Finding truly rewarding work that is within our reach is often difficult, but if you are determined to make a career out of helping other people, then nursing is an excellent choice to consider.

“Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.”
Robert Collier

There are lots of careers out there that offer the opportunity to make a difference in people’s lives, but there are very few that can offer the same benefits as nursing. Not only do nurses help other people in a variety of different ways, but the job also calls on a wide range of different skills that are highly transferable and applicable to other areas of life. Below are some of the key reasons that nursing is a particularly good career choice.

Call on a Variety of Different Skills

In order to succeed in the field of nursing, nurses will rely on a range of skills. Of course, a lot of these are things that are specific to nursing, but the role also regularly requires nurses to call on skills that they have learned elsewhere. The best nurses are those who are educated beyond their nursing training. This is reflected in the number of universities that allow students to transfer into a nursing degree from a completely different type of degree.

For example, this MBA Michigan enables students to transfer into an MSN from an MBA. MBA students will learn numerous skills that will serve them well if they decide to transfer to a nursing degree.

The Masters of Business Administration has long been a staple of many entrepreneurs’ tool kits. Earning this degree entails gaining an in-depth understanding of how to run a business. The MBA is designed both for those who want to start their own business from scratch and those who want to take on leadership opportunities in existing businesses.

The variety of skills and knowledge that MBA students will learn reflects the broad remit of the degree. Over the course of an MBA degree, students will learn about how to manage business finances and accounting, how to manage employees, and how to handle marketing for a start-up business. These are just a few of the diverse topics that are covered over the course of an MBA.

The above refers to the general MBA degree, which is the one that most students pursue. However, there are more specialized MBA degrees available that are designed for those looking to run a business within a particular industry.

Whatever form a student’s MBA course takes, it will equip them with the tools they need to handle both the day-to-day running of a business and the bigger picture long-term stuff. Many of the skills that MBA students learn are things that are also useful in the field of nursing.

For example:

  • Organization: Nurses need to be well-organized and keep on top of their duties. If nurses neglect to do their jobs, then the potential consequences for patients are serious. In order to remain an effective part of the team, a nurse, like a business manager, needs to have a complete overhead picture of their working environment. As nurses advance through the ranks and take on more senior roles, they will take on more responsibility for overseeing other nurses. This makes good organizational skills even more important.
  • Decisiveness: If you are a nurse working in the emergency room, you can’t afford to delay and dither when a patient needs to be treated as quickly as possible. Nurses often find themselves facing time-sensitive situations that demand snap decisions and spontaneous thinking. Nurses need to be able to confidently make decisions quickly and under pressure.
  • Flexibility: As well as reacting decisively to situations, nurses also need to be able to adapt their approach to reflect their circumstances. Every patient is different, and the same condition can present very differently in very similar people. Not all nurses will be working in fully-equipped hospitals either. If you ever decide to take on some volunteer work overseas, you may even find yourself working with only the bare minimum amount of medical equipment.
  • Personal skills: Much like entrepreneurs, nurses will need to develop excellent interpersonal skills. The way that nurses interact with patients can have a significant bearing on the rate of that patient’s recovery, and their overall experience of being in the hospital. Good communication between nurses and patients is important, but good communication between the nurses and the other medical staff is even more important. While nurses work in a variety of different contexts, in all of these contexts they are working alongside other professionals in order to deliver healthcare.
  • Management and leadership: As nurses progress through the ranks of the profession, they will take on a growing amount of responsibility. Not only does this mean taking on more responsibility for patients’ well-being, but it also means taking on more responsibility for junior nurses. Training up the next generation of nurses is one of the most important aspects of any senior nursing position. In order to succeed at the highest echelons of the nursing profession, nurses will need to be proficient in management and leadership in the same way that a business owner must be.
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Help Other People

It probably won’t surprise you to learn that one of the most commonly cited reasons that people go into the nursing profession is so that they can help other people in some way. Generally, when we think of nurses, we think of nurses who work in emergency rooms dealing with patients in the hospital. In reality, this is just one of the many contexts that nurses are found in. Not all nursing roles involve direct patient contact, but even these involve helping other people in some way.

For example, some nurses work in research, assisting doctors or scientists in conducting trials and other research in order to advance our understanding of medicine. These nurses will often never come into contact with the people who benefit the most from their work, but being involved in the right study or piece of research can mean helping potentially millions of people.

If you are someone who has a burning passion to help other people, then nursing is an ideal career to consider. There are lots of other noble careers out there, but few are quite as noble and altruistic as nursing. Some nurses work with different patients every single day, whereas others will work with the same set of patients over a prolonged period.

Similarly, some nursing roles, such as working in an emergency room, can be hectic and potentially very stressful. Other roles are more laid-back, albeit still very demanding. For example, many nurses find that working in a care home with the elderly is a reasonably laid-back experience when compared to the highly kinetic environment of the emergency room.

Work in a Variety of Contexts

There are lots of different nursing careers out there. The day to day life of any nurse will depend on the specific role that they work in, and with such a diverse range of contexts that nurses can work in, nurses can choose a role with work that suits their skill set.

For example, the role of quality improvement coordinator is perfect for those who enjoy the management and administration side of nursing.

As the name implies, this role involves ensuring that services are being delivered properly and patient care is of a certain quality. This is achieved by ensuring all of the necessary administrative tasks that are required to keep the ward running are being performed promptly and properly. Quality improvement coordinators also take responsibility for setting the general workflow. Not only this, but over time they should be refining and rethinking their approach as circumstances dictate.

A quality improvement coordinator may be a dedicated role, but is often a role taken on by a senior nurse on top of their other duties. There are many benefits to having frontline nurses involved in quality improvement, as they have the best vantage point from which to assess whether the current approach is working or not.

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Other nursing roles you may not have considered include:

  • Forensic nursing
  • Fitness nursing
  • Faith-based nursing
  • Holistic nursing
  • Insurance nursing

As with other professions, nursing is seeing a growing number of roles relating to data. Data is all around us today, and businesses and organizations in all sectors are increasingly taking a data-driven approach to their strategic planning.

Quality improvement coordinators will need to gather and analyze data, but there are a number of other roles that are similarly rooted in data. Data analytics have always been important in medicine, but the advent of big data has completely changed the game.

There is currently an ongoing debate about patient data and how open it should be. Medical data needs to be kept private, and yet the benefits of having access to vast amounts of medical data are self-evident. Many healthcare organizations are looking to hire people specifically to manage and protect their data for them. In both the EU and the United States, there are significant penalties on the line if businesses, especially healthcare businesses, allow patient data to fall into the wrong hands.

Nursing administrators, as well as quality improvement coordinators, will need to have a grasp of these issues and will have to ensure that they are gathering, storing, and using data responsibly.

Excellent Career Progression Opportunities

Nursing has always been a fantastic career for women and remains a solid female-dominated industry today. However, regardless of your background, nursing is a fantastic career in terms of progression opportunities. Talented nurses will have absolutely no trouble rising to the top of the pack, where they can take responsibility for ensuring that the next-generation is properly trained and taught.

In order to move from one level of nursing to the next, nurses will need to study for the appropriate qualification. This is something that can be done at their pace and discretion, although talented nurses will often find that healthcare institutions are eager to help them progress. Coupled with the numerous grants and scholarship programs that exist out there, nursing is a career that has provided progression opportunities, not only for women, but for those who come from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Nursing is an excellent career to invest in if you are looking for something that will truly be long-term. It is incredibly satisfying to be working towards progressing a career, rather than just working a job in order to make ends meet.

The advent of credible online degrees also means that nurses can now study courses on a part-time basis easily. Studying part-time used to be something that not all universities offered. However, it is commonplace for distance learning courses as these are generally aimed at people who are unable to commit to campus courses.

Students studying for nursing degrees will need to complete varying levels of practical work within health care institutions. The amount of practical work required varies depending on the course, but many students will be working nurses anyway, and so can satisfy these requirements within their usual place of work.

There are a lot of reasons to want to work as a nurse. It is quite rightly considered to be a very difficult job to do, and there’s no getting around the stresses and strains that are inherent in the work. However, nursing is a unique opportunity to make a real difference to patients’ lives and to help shepherd people through some of the most difficult moments in their life.

Studying for a nursing degree is an excellent investment in your future. Nurses are always in demand, and the work they do is vital to our society. If you are looking for a long-term career where you can make a real difference to people’s lives, then look no further than nursing. Anyone can begin studying to become a nurse – the degree has never been so accessible.



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