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Posted on 19th October, 2022
8 Minutes read
Practical Advice for Choosing Your Nursing Specialty
Throughout every region, there is a need for nurses. They regularly visit the waiting rooms of metropolitan hospitals, the corridors of suburban emergency rooms, and the waiting rooms of rural town clinics and establishments. Even within the same hospital, nurses might find themselves working in a wide range of settings with a broad spectrum of patients, which is why many choose to specialise.
1. What made you want to pursue a career in nursing?
Most nurses claim that they were motivated to answer their calling and became nurses as a result of some incident or event in their past. It might have been the experience of witnessing a sick relative and the nurses who cared for them, the sense of being compelled to have a personal effect on the lives of others or observing the status of healthcare and longing to make things better. Asking yourself “why” you wanted to become a nurse in the first place might help point you in the direction of a nursing speciality that will provide you with the greatest sense of personal satisfaction.
Most nursing specialities involve working directly with patients; however, some non-clinical nursing jobs require you to work behind a desk or in an office, focusing on policies, information technology (IT), and practice guidelines; directing the future of healthcare; or managing others who are engaged in direct patient care. The first thing you need to do to influence your choice of nursing specialisation is to determine the sort of job you are interested in doing as well as the demographics of the patients you may wish to assist.
2. If you could work anywhere in the world as a nurse, where would it be?
It is possible to find nurses with the same speciality in a rural community or in a massive hospital nonetheless, it is important to be aware of the types of work environments in which you flourish in order to choose the kind of nursing speciality you might pursue. According to AMN Healthcare’s 2017 Survey of Registered Nurses, some Registered nurses aim to work in fields outside of direct patient care, others hope to work fewer hours, while still others are considering a career in travel nursing.
3. Are you someone who thrives in a lively environment?
If this seems like something that interests you, some potential careers include working in an emergency room as a trauma nurse or critical care nurse or ultimately becoming a flight nurse. Consider specialising in geriatric nursing or becoming a family nurse practitioner if you’d rather work in an environment with a slower pace and more opportunities to develop long-term connections with patients. There are hundreds of nursing specialisations available for registered nurses who want to abandon the hallways and get more involved in their communities. Many of these specialities follow a 9 to 5 schedule, or something very similar to it, such as clinical staff and occupational health nurses.
4. What educational prerequisites does the nursing speciality you choose require?
Although a Bachelor of Nursing degree is the minimum requirement for most nursing specialities, expanding your education will allow you to choose from a wider variety of nursing careers, each of which offers its own set of advantages, including a greater probability of earning a higher salary. Some nursing students choose to get their Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree immediately after graduating from an RN course and then continue their education by enrolling in master’s and Doctoral level programmes after that. Others are interested in pursuing nursing subspecialties once they have successfully completed the NCLEX. The road that each nurse takes is one of a kind, and the nursing field as a whole is essential to the well-being of people in every region of the globe.
What to expect: There is no specialty of professional nursing that is best suited to every individual who works in the healthcare industry. Don’t be startled if someone tells you that you need to give some serious thought to how you might fit into this exceptionally broad job sector. You might find that doing some introspection leads you to a fascinating speciality that paves the way for you to attain the ultimate level of professional contentment.
The world is in desperate need of nurses; the ones that are most dedicated to their fields will be the most successful.