Career Planning: the Case of Nursing Essay Example

in the community, research facility or hospital ward, and could also mark the beginning of their journey to academic clinical nurse.

In the United States, three traditional criteria to becoming an RN exist including: a hospital-administered diploma program, an associate degree mostly offered by community colleges, as well as a baccalaureate degree qualification provided by universities and senior colleges. Graduates from these three programs are required to sit for the National Council Licensing Examination for RN licenses (NCLEX-RN), and is a measure of minimum technical competence of new entrants into the nursing practice. The examination is administered by the National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN) (Norman, 2015).

Holistic Life Balance

Holistic life balance in the nursing involve personal development, personal learning, and responses to environmental influences (Webb et al, 2014).

Through personal learning, the student will be able to incorporate what he or she has learnt into his or her career choice by identifying and learning the skills necessary for adjustment in nursing practice and life roles (Webb et al, 2014;Coombs, Latter, & Richardson, 2012). Besides, personal skills will also need to be incorporated into this lifelong work-life balance. Furthermore, because factors in the nursing environment will impact choices, these factors must also be taken into consideration in career transition programming. Holistic balance will also be achieved by taking advantage of opportunities for career development including support and mentorship, further education as well as nursing management support schemes (Cleary et al, 2013).

Stressors and Challenges

Cleary et al (2012) identified the following four factors as the most notorious impediments to nursing career development: lack of sufficient work-related support at the workplace; there perceived insufficient opportunities for

clinical professional and career development; excessive working hours for nurses; as well as the notable limited access to further nursing education opportunities based on individual merit. In their survey of recent nursing graduates in Singapore, Cleary et al (2012) conclude that such perceived barriers to clinical career development could be overcome through a numbers measures and initiatives including undertaking broad multifactorial changes in healthcare system, decreasing and ensuring more flexibility in nursing working hours, as well as ensuring increased fairness in access to opportunities for furthering clinical nursing and higher education. These challenges are also highlighted by Norman (2015).

Lifelong Learning

Entry into the nursing career provides the first step for nursing professional seeking to advance in this challenging field maintain the critical competency and discipline required to succeed in this ever-evolving field. Nursing career offers opportunities for lifelong learning with a wide range of opportunities for educational progression through practice experiences and lifelong learning to improve nursing knowledge (Cleary et al, 2015; Norman, 2015).

Regrettably, few nurses are taking advantages that exist for career advancement through lifelong learning despite the numerous opportunities and increased demand for clinical nurse specialists, nurse practitioners, researchers, administrators, faculty, among other nursing roles that need expertise-level training and preparation.Nurses considering a movement into baccalaureate or graduate studies have a variety of program choices including BSN degree-completion options for RNs; direct baccalaureate-to-doctoral programs with nursing career pathways leading to practice-focused, terminal degrees (PhD, DNSc, or DSN), research-focused, or terminal DNP degree (Norman, 2015). Additionally, there are opportunities for master’s degree programs for progression into highly specialized and complex nursing practice roles, besides opportunities for faculty position preparation programs (Coombs, Latter, &

Richardson, 2012).

Professional Contributions

As practice nurse, the student will be able to contribute to the profession by taking advantage of opportunities for career development, workplace support and access to further education. This will improve the nurse ability, skills, and knowledge in delivery nursing care.

Accordingly, this will also a positive influence on the nursing career satisfaction with respect to the individual (Coombs, Latter, & Richardson, 2012; Cleary et al, 2012).

Conclusion

This paper highlights some of the issues clinical nurses consider when planning for their transitions from studentship to professional nursing practice, including potential access to opportunities for professional and career development merit-based opportunities for further education, as well as workplace support. Importantly, these issues have potential to significantly impact nursing care practice as well as influence nurse present-job retention rates across the global health service systems, and have been linked to job and nursing career satisfaction.

References

1. Cleary, M., Horsfall, J., Muthulakshmi, P., Happell, B., & Hunt, G. E. (2013). Career development: graduate nurse views. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 22(17/18), 2605-2613 9p. doi:10.1111/jocn.12080
2. Coombs, M., Latter, S., & Richardson, A.

   (2012). Developing a clinical academic career pathway for nursing. British Journal of Nursing, 21(18), 1084-1090 7p

3. Norman, K. M. (2015). The image of community nursing: implications for future student nurse recruitment.

   British Journal of Community Nursing, 20(1), 12-18 7p. doi:10.12968/bjcn.2015.20.1.12

4. Webb, K., Repetto, J., Seabrooks-Blackmore, J., Patterson, K. B., & Alderfer, K. (2014). Career development: Preparation, integration, and collaboration.

   Journal of Vocational Rehabilitation, 40(3), 231-238 8p. doi:10.3233/JVR-140688