Nursing is often considered the most important job in the entire world. Doctors are essential, but there will never be enough to provide the level of care necessary to help the population at large. This is not just something that RNs provide, either. Nurses are going for online DNP programs to become nurse administrators, who work on a grander scale to improve the quality-of-care patients receive, and the level of support that nurses are provided around the country and even the world.
Nurses are the backbone of healthcare, and therefore the backbone of society as a whole. If there was anything that could drive that point home, a global pandemic would be it. Frontline healthcare workers are working around the clock to care for both the regular intake of patients and the influx of those with the coronavirus.
While doctors are absolutely instrumental in helping against this tide, it is the nurses who spend the most time with patients and who provide the care and human compassion that patients need when they are in the hospital, possibly more than any other time.
Nursing, especially if you push through to the highest levels of nursing, can be very rewarding, and allow you to bring in a very attractive salary. Add on to the fact that you will be doing instrumental work to changing the lives of both your patients and their families, and it is easy to see why more and more are looking to transfer their careers into nursing.
Reasons to Choose Nursing as Your Career
There are many great reasons to choose nursing as your career, and not just from the outset. Thanks to the way the entire career structure is built, you can easily transfer your existing efforts to become a nurse at almost any time. If you already have a bachelor’s degree in a science, for example, you can fast-track through a BSN and get started as an RN in just a few short years. Alternatively, you can get started in just a few weeks as a Certified Nursing Assistant.
The multiple career paths are just one of the many reasons to choose nursing as your dream career, with many in the profession citing these other benefits as reasons to becoming a nurse:
1. Your Work Makes a Difference
One of the biggest reasons to become a nurse is to finally work in a position that makes a real, visceral difference. This difference is both small and large scale. You can help improve the care and comfort of a patient so that they can get through a relatively dark period in their life. You can even help save someone’s life. This becomes only more prevalent the more you invest in your professional development.
While you will not be saving lives as a Certified Nursing Assistant, you can do so daily as an ER APRN.
The training a nurse receives makes a difference as well. To put this into perspective, consider that just a 10% increase of BSN nurses decreases mortality rates and reduces readmission rates.
2. You Can Work Almost Anywhere
Most nurses will work in hospitals and other healthcare settings like clinics, but that is far from the only place where you can find them. Their work is in health, and the health of people matters wherever you are. You can become a travel nurse, taking up vacancies around the state or even travel around the United States if you originally earned your license in one of the Nurse Licensure States.
You could work on research trips and be the on-site nurse for a whole host of people as they head out into the natural world to understand it better. You can be a set nurse and be there in case someone is hurt on the movie set or alternatively hurt during a stunt.
As a school nurse, you can work in schools, earn an Ed. D to become a nurse educator, or become a top healthcare administrator with online DNP programs. In addition, there are so many places where you can work privately and publicly, both at home and abroad. You have options as a nurse, and the sooner you start thinking of the whole world of opportunities in front of you, the better.
3. You Can Customize Your Career Path
Nursing is definitely more straightforward than other careers. You must meet certain requirements to earn your license and to renew it. At the very least, this makes it a simple matter to become qualified and start out in the job market. As you can glean from the sheer number of opportunities out there, having legal qualifications is just the start.
Not even the degree or workshop you invest in will automatically lead to a promotion, either. You could, technically, become a healthcare administrator like the Director of Nursing without online DNP programs. But, at the same time, healthcare nurses with online DNP programs under their belt earn around 21% higher than those without.
Building your career is therefore going to be straightforward right until it is not, but once you have reached that stage, you will know you have finally got to a place where your interests matter and where you can finally start pursuing a field of medicine that you are most interested in.
4. Pay and Benefits are Good
While the lower levels of nursing are not that well paid, the higher up you go, the closer you start to reach six-figure salaries. Nurses can be paid very well for what they do, with most APRNs earning around $100,000 or more per year. Their training and expertise are invaluable, both when working directly with patients or indirectly in the healthcare industry as a whole.
These wages, of course, are for those working in hospitals. However, if you work privately, you can earn even more. Some APRNs, for example, can open a private practice. If you work as a private nurse, you can set whatever wage you deem is worth your time, and if your clients agree, then you have a thriving business set up.
You can also earn more the higher and more qualified you are, with those who have online DNP programs under their belt earning far more than those without, even if they are both APRNs. Education and training in nursing is almost always rewarded.
Nursing Education: Your Best Means to Advance Your Career
Nursing is one of the few careers around the world where education and academic training is not just something that is nice for you to have, but it is legally required. Regardless of whether you are looking at BSN, MSN, or online DNP programs, however, you need your degree to offer a few essential benefits:
1. Accreditation
Accreditation is everything in nursing. If a recognized body does not accredit the degree you earn, then it is worthless to you. You will not be allowed to take the exam or earn your license. You will also not be able to progress your career further. Online DNP programs specifically require nurses to have an accredited MSN under their belt before they apply.
There is no way to get around it, and therefore you must always check that the degree you are looking at gives you what you need. New degree offers might offer many benefits, especially if they have designed a special online platform to improve the quality of your education, but if they are not accredited, you cannot use that degree in your career as a nurse; it is as simple as that.
2. Be Designed for Working Nurses
However, this should be something that all online degrees offer; unfortunately, that is not always the case. You can easily tell which degrees are designed for working professionals because they offer several key features that will make it easier to study, even with demanding shift work.
For one, it should be entirely online, with the exception, of course, your clinic hours and training. For those clinic hours, you should be provided placement. You should also have the option to take as little as one course at a time. Some programs even allow you to choose the duration of each course, with either 8 week or 16-week courses, so that you can comfortably fit the degree around your individual schedule.
This applies to BSN, MSN, and online DNP programs.
3. Ongoing Support
You should have ongoing, dedicated support throughout your degree. This applies help should come for you whenever you need it; academically, technically, and emotionally. One-on-one coaching can make all the difference in how successful your degree is for your career, especially with online DNP programs where your degree will not make you automatically qualified in the same way your MSN did.
It will make you more qualified, absolutely, but DNP programs can be seen as the nursing equivalent of an MBA and having a coach to help you through the degree and to help you with your own career afterwards will be instrumental to your own professional success.
Building Your Career as a Nurse
Nursing is a mixture of hard work and education, and it always will be. Knowing that nursing is right for you and what to look for in a degree are the foundations of your career. To build a career that combines your passion, interests, and talents, you will need to know how to progress properly through your career as a nurse. Whether you’re in the operating room, tending to patients in the ICU, or making rounds on the floor, donning a nurse uniform a symbol of your commitment, success, and dedication to the profession, also comes in different colors depending on the workplace you’re in, and these come with green, maroon, and navy blue scrubs.
Network
You will have a lot of networking opportunities while you work and study, so the most important tip here is actually to keep in touch and use them. Online job boards like LinkedIn are not just for job hunts, and they are to keep in touch with those that you know professionally. By doing that, you can make yourself a top choice even for top job roles like Director of Nursing when the time is right.
Know Your Options as a Nurse
There are so many options as a nurse, and those options are only going to expand. Telehealth, for example, is going to completely change the healthcare system as we know it and work to connect rural patients with the quality care that they deserve. In addition, more states are joining the eNLC, meaning you can move and find the perfect home and still do your job. You can even look outside of the healthcare system and find a career.
It does not matter if you are not working in a high-stress, high-demand role. What matters is that you find the job that you love, because as nurse there is no way that you will not be helping people in one way, or another.
Take Your Time
As time goes on your options are only going to expand. The population is growing and aging, which means nurses are going to increase in demand as time goes on.
Nursing can be a very, very difficult job. It is one of the jobs that suffers the most from issues like compassion fatigue and burnout, and unfortunately those issues are not going to be fixed so long as there is a nursing shortage.
If you need to, take the option to study part time. Most online DNP programs will allow you to take one course at a time, and some will even allow you to double the amount of time it takes to complete each course so that you can comfortably fit that degree around your work and life schedule.
