Tag: career

Nursing is rarely short of opportunities for personal growth. Whether it’s through your interactions with patients, the daily challenges you have to overcome, or navigating choppy emotional waters, this is a career that contributes to your overall enrichment.

However, certain career paths may provide these personal growth benefits more than others. Travel nursing, for example, tests your nursing skills in a foreign environment — whether it’s in a different community, state, or country. With this challenge, you can learn about yourself as a person and a nurse, truly understand your capabilities, and grow from there.

Let’s take a look at how travel nursing can help you achieve personal growth and a few things you should consider to improve your potential outcomes.

Making Informed Choices

Even though travel nursing in general has the potential to help you grow as a person, it’s up to you to decide where and how you’d like to integrate this career choice in your life.

Base your decision on whether you’re ready to relocate, in general.  If you have a family, it’s certainly vital to examine how traveling might affect their needs, particularly when you have young children who require a sense of stability. Don’t forget to look into whether your intended destination will have the services — recreational, medical, and others — that you need to thrive.

Be honest with yourself about how a shift into travel nursing could impact your career goals. After all, your continued path as a medical professional is key to your personal growth as well as your professional development. Registered nurse jobs are everywhere, but if you’re in a specialized field, is there enough demand to keep you reliably employed? Consider where you’d like to be not just in the next year, but also in the next five years. Would your move into travel nursing disrupt or enhance this? You may find it helpful to look at industry growth statistics in different parts of the world to assess the likelihood of continued enriching opportunities.

Finding the Right Location

You could consider prioritizing locations that are in particular need of your skills. For example, certain regions around the world, especially, rural areas are in desperate need of medical professionals with specialty knowledge such as obstetrics or emergency care. If you’re looking to stay within the U.S., there is certainly no shortage of medically underserved areas/populations (MUA/Ps). You could target destinations that experience a general county-wide lack of primary care services, or those with key populations in need, such as those experiencing homelessness or migrant farm workers.

If you’d like to go further afield, you could join an organization such as Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) or the American Red Cross. Here, you could serve developing nations, populations that are in conflict zones, or people that are in the middle of public health or natural emergencies. These opportunities provide chances for personal growth, exposing you to various cultures and perspectives.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that some destinations have a reputation for personal growth opportunities. You can prioritize your locations based on what traits, skills, or values you’d like to focus on. For instance, Alaska could expose you to both natural wonders and extreme outdoor adventure possibilities. Travel nursing in Italy or Thailand can give you opportunities to be closer to religious centers that support your spiritual growth intentions.

Getting the Most From the Experience

You can get the most personal growth from your travel nursing if you’re more intentional about how you approach it. As you know, simply drifting through any experience is unlikely to result in the most meaningful results. Take the time to put yourself out there and make choices that’ll expose you to new experiences — whether abroad or in the U.S.

First and foremost, be open to exploring new cultures and communities. Remember that some of the greatest moments of growth come from sharing the values and perspectives that are outside of your usual comfort zone. Seek out local events and celebrations. Ask locals to talk to you about the significance of certain activities and traditions. Learn a little of the local language, wherever possible.

Even if you’re just moving to another state, there’s likely to be local cultural nuances to engage with. When you make genuine efforts here, you can better understand what’s important to the people you’re interacting with and the challenges they face. This develops a greater sense of empathy and human connection, which is important both as a nurse and a rounded human being.

Another purely practical way to get the most out of the experience is to save money. This can both reduce the stress you experience when you’re away and give you more funds to put toward activities for personal growth. Utilize methods to cut the costs of travel, including travel reservation apps that provide you with a wider range of options that could suit your budget. See if you can negotiate rates with airlines or accommodation providers, particularly if your travel nursing is to serve communities in need. If you’re running your own nursing business, you may also find your travel is tax deductible, so don’t forget to claim it.

Conclusion

Travel nursing can combine the personal growth opportunities that naturally arise from traveling to new places and from building your career as a nurse.

There’s certainly no shortage of demand for talented nurses across the world today. You should consider this an empowering thought that gives you the space to make the choices that are right for you and where you want your nursing skills to take you.

Katie Brenneman is a passionate writer specializing in lifestyle, mental health, activism-related content. When she isn’t writing, you can find her with her nose buried in a book or hiking with her dog, Charlie. To connect with Katie, you can follow her on Twitter. 

Disclaimer: The viewpoint expressed in this article is the opinion of the author and is not necessarily the viewpoint of the owners or employees at Healthcare Staffing Innovations, LLC.

Almost half of all nurses leave the profession entirely after just five years on the job. The reason is pretty simple. Nursing is hard. The hours are brutal. The labor is both physically intensive and mentally exhausting. The pay, though higher than average, fails to appreciate the significance of the work.

It makes sense why a lot of nurses decide that the field isn’t for them. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that a total exit is required. There are many enticing alternatives to bedside nursing that pay well and create unique opportunities for the nurse who is pursuing them.

In this article, we take a look at possible career moves you can make as a nurse.

Changing Lanes

If you are hoping to transition into a different specialty, there are several important steps that should take to make sure that you are taking advantage of an opportunity that you will find genuinely rewarding.

• Research: The first step is to research what types of jobs are out there. You would be surprised by the different roles nurses can play within the healthcare industry. For example, do you or someone you know struggle with diabetes? There are entire nursing professions designed around helping newly diagnosed people with diabetes cope with and manage their condition.
• Determine what the job requires: Usually, your nursing degree will be adequate for helping you gain employment in a similar field. However, there are certain situations where a special certification may be required. Before you get too far along in the application process, find out what the job you are interested in requires. Note that some jobs may allow you to begin working as you finish up a certification program. It may be worthwhile to speak with potential employers about what qualifications they insist upon.
• Network: Chances are you probably know a lot of people who have been working within the healthcare industry for a long time. Even your current coworkers may be able to get you a good lead on a new gig. Once you put the word out that you are interested in changing lanes, you may be surprised to find how many opportunities present themselves. Do be careful what you say. Your current employer may not take kindly to the news.
• Consider the merit of stepping stones: It’s also worth keeping in mind that it may not be possible to pivot immediately into your dream job. Sometimes, it will be necessary to work your way up. Consider the value of transitional jobs. You may not want to work as a research nurse in the long haul, but if it gets you off the night shift while you look for your dream job, it may be worth doing.
• Get serious about your application materials: Don’t let your guard down just because the demand for nurses is high. Desirable positions can still get very competitive. And because nursing is such a geographically limited position (each area will only have a limited number of hospitals) you may need to be willing to move or take on a long commute to get the job that you want.

Changing your nursing specialty can be a deeply rewarding experience. While there is a process you will need to follow, once you commit the efforts will be worth it. Now that you know what it takes to change lanes, let’s take a look at a few jobs that might be of interest to you.

Home Health Nursing

Home health nursing is a specialized field in which the nurse goes directly to the patients, treating them from the comfort of their own homes. The job can vary quite significantly based on the patient’s needs. However, at its core, many of the responsibilities are the same that those a bedside nurse experiences.

The primary difference is that you will be working with the patient in their home setting. This can create a more comfortable and personal work environment that many nurses appreciate.

As a home health nurse, your responsibilities will include:

• Conducting comprehensive assessments of patient’s health status and developing individualized care plans.
• Administering medications, treatments, and wound care as prescribed by physicians.
• Monitoring patients’ vital signs and evaluating their response to interventions.
• Educating patients and their families on disease management, medication adherence, and lifestyle modifications.
• Collaborating with physicians, therapists, and other healthcare professionals to coordinate and optimize patient care.
• Providing emotional support and counseling to patients and their families.
• Documenting patient care activities accurately and maintaining up-to-date medical records.

Nurse Informaticist

A nurse informist leverages tech skills to optimize healthcare information systems. Sometimes called informatics nurses, these professionals work directly with data in order to optimize internal operations and improve patient outcomes.

Note that this is a role that will most likely require a special certification.

Research Nurse

Research nurses work in more academic settings, helping to conduct studies, analyze research, and share findings with the wider research community. Research nurses can work for hospitals but also often find jobs at universities.

If you are interested in conducting studies and shaping the field rather than doing hands-on work, this profession may be right for you.

Administrative Nursing

Nurse administrators work in a leadership capacity, helping hospitals oversee budgeting, internal policy-making, and professional development among the staff. While the end goal of your efforts will be to improve patient outcomes, the actual work itself will be based primarily in an office-type setting.

Telehealth

Telehealth nurses work with patients remotely to help answer questions, assess health situations and provide other forms of guidance. The idea behind telehealth jobs is to make healthcare as accessible as possible, even for people who are not able to make regular visits to the hospital.

While the work does not usually involve physical contact with patients, it is highly patient-driven, allowing you to still help take care of people while forgoing some of the more challenging aspects of traditional bedside nursing.

With a Bachelor’s in Health Science along with an MBA, Sarah Daren has a wealth of knowledge within both the health and business sectors. Her expertise in scaling and identifying ways tech can improve the lives of others has led Sarah to be a consultant for a number of startup businesses, most prominently in the wellness industry, wearable technology and health education. She implements her health knowledge into every aspect of her life with a focus on making America a healthier and safer place for future generations to come.

Disclaimer: The viewpoint expressed in this article is the opinion of the author and is not necessarily the viewpoint of the owners or employees at Healthcare Staffing Innovations, LLC.