Five Skills that can Help Nurses Upscale in Career

As a professional in any industry, your main goal would always be to upgrade and excel further. Taking your career to the next stage can be incredibly exciting and can help you take on greater responsibilities and become a bigger shareholder. However, the requirements for upscaling your career are different across every industry. 

If you’re working in the healthcare industry – and as a nurse in particular – there are several skills you’ll need to master to upscale your career. To ensure you can work as a registered nurse in the international market, it’s important to pass the NCLEX exam and understand how is the NCLEX scored. Nurses have an immense responsibility on their shoulders, not just to their superiors but to their patients too. Without nurses, patients can fail to get the care they need and it can be incredibly challenging for them to recover. So, nurses need to inculcate certain skills to ensure the highest degree of patient satisfaction. If you’re interested in learning more, keep reading below. 

A thirst for knowledge 

The first skill you need to grow your career is a thirst for knowledge. Medicine is an ever-evolving field, filled with groundbreaking innovations almost every day. Whether it’s in terms of revolutionizing patient care, developing new treatments, or tackling chronic disorders, medicine always has new developments that healthcare staff needs to stay updated on. Without a thirst for knowledge, it can be challenging for you to get on board the latest developments. 

If you’re new to nursing, getting a BSN is the best way to kick-start your career. A bachelor’s in nursing can give you the wealth of knowledge necessary to provide top-quality care to all kinds of patients. With the latest degree, you can be better equipped to handle any issue that shows up in the ER or otherwise. Moreover, a BSN can help you become infinitely more employable and can help you get much higher pay. Once you grow your career in nursing with a BSN, you can be much more prepared to move even further ahead. 

Teamwork 

Nursing isn’t one of those disciplines where you can work alone without coordinating with others around you. As a nurse, the only way to give your patients the best care is by working in tandem with the doctors, paramedics, anesthesiologists, and other healthcare staff in your facility. Sharing data, getting advice, and ensuring full cooperation of all parties is vital to ensure patients get holistic care. 

Moreover, teamwork is vital if you want to flourish within your organization. When assessing individuals for promotions, your superiors are always likely to prefer nurses who are well integrated into the hospital. When nurses work well with other professionals, they’re likely to reduce the incidence of errors, improve patient satisfaction and safety, and create a healthier, happier workplace. Moreover, when you share the work with other professionals, you can reduce the risk for burnout and can handle any emergency with ease. 

Collaborative learning 

If you’re looking to advance your career, theoretical knowledge alone isn’t enough. You need a lot of experiential knowledge to supplement what you learn in the classroom. Real-world learning is the best way you’re going to equip yourself to handle the many unique situations and conditions you can encounter in the workplace as a nurse. Working under a nurse mentor is easily one of the best ways to get specialized experiential knowledge to advance your career. 

Apart from the experience you can gain when working under a mentor, you can also get immensely valuable advice. Mentors are highly practiced in their field, and they can give you valuable guidance about what areas to pursue, what ventures to partake in, and so on. A mentor can thus be the most valuable asset as you navigate through your career. Moreover, mentors are also incredibly well-connected, and they can help connect nurses with employers or graduate advisors. If you can’t find a mentor through HR, discussing options with a senior nurse practitioner in your department can help. 

Communication skills

Communication skills are a vital prerequisite if you want to upscale your nursing career. As stated earlier, nurses don’t work in a bubble. You need to collaborate and work alongside a host of other healthcare practitioners. Effective communication can help you devise the best treatment protocols for each patient, leading to high patient satisfaction. 

Additionally, communication skills are vital to connecting with patients better. Nurses spend the most time with patients of all healthcare practitioners. If you aren’t able to communicate with patients well, you can only increase the health anxiety they experience. Clear, concise and transparent communication is imperative if you want to increase your ratings and advance your career. If you’re having trouble communicating well with patients, shadowing advanced practitioners can help you perfect your bedside manner and excel. 

Volunteer

Nurses have an incredibly diverse skill set, and if you want to maximize your potential and employability, you want to take your skills out of a traditional hospital setting. Working in non-traditional settings, with a lack of resources, funding and a host of other issues can help you challenge yourself unlike anything else. If you’re looking to upscale your CV, volunteer work can be an excellent addition. 

Volunteer work can allow you to gain some valuable professional experience, which can help you take your career to the next level. It includes going directly to the most vulnerable populations and tackling the unique health problems they face. This can increase your chances of upscaling your career as it can show employers that you’re not afraid of taking risks. Moreover, it can give you much more depth as a professional and show your superiors how dedicated you are to your profession and helping others. 

Assess the job market 

You can’t become the ideal candidate without having any direction. If you have an ideal job in mind, researching everything required can be the best bet to upscaling your nursing career. Whether it’s a specialization, a certain amount of experience, or anything else, research can help you devise a better game plan. 

Once you brush up on the required skills, abilities and experiences, you can have a better chance of bagging the position and moving forward with nurse staffing in Ohio. Speaking to hiring professionals, mentors and other individuals in the field can also help you have a much clearer idea of how you can move forward in your nursing career. 

Conclusion 

Advancing your nursing career can help make work much more fulfilling and satisfying, personally and professionally. With these tips, you can get out of the rut and start preparing to take your career to the next stage. With these tips, you can prepare yourself for an exciting future ahead as a nurse.