Skip to main content

Developing a Patient-Centered Career Path

Every month I spend a few hours talking to students, both graduate and undergraduate, about what to do next in their careers. I have these conversations enough that I've started to think that the half-life of a bedside nurse in any clinical setting is about 15 years, though there is no research to support this (yet).  Colleagues at the RN Work Project just might figure it out as they study new graduate career patterns.

Anyway, the central theme of most of these discussion is the patients that care for or finding that patient population that makes them happy in their jobs. Sometimes its about creating the conditions that make for happy nurses caring for satisfied patients.

The central question is: How can you create a patient-centered career path?

Let's walk through a few questions to ask yourself. I'll use examples from my own career to illustrate.

Q: Who are the patients you love to work with and in which clinical setting?

A: I started off my career in med-surg and then settled into kidney transplant.  I love working transplant with its complex combination of medicine and surgery. Most of the time, I was assigned to care for Spanish speaking patients since I am fluent in the language. It was a culture I understood better than many of my co-workers thanks to years spent volunteering and studying in Mexico. I knew they'd pull me in to translate anyway, so it became easier just to be assigned to them even if it meant walking extra steps between rooms. I frequently took on limited English proficiency patients too. When you've learned to speak another language or had to struggle as a non-native speaker in another country, a certain amount of patience develops that translates well into direct patient care with those who do not speak your language.

Conclusion: My patients were transplant recipients and immigrants.

Q: Which masters degree worked best with my patients?

A: I actually started off in a nurse practitioner program. I had my first clinical and concluded it was not for me. That was not how I wanted to interact with my patients in a clinical setting. One thing I realized about what I liked best with working with patients was the teaching part. There's a lot of teaching that happens in transplant because patients who can't stick to their new medication regimen will end up back in the hospital really quickly with a rejection episode. For the limited English proficiency patients, I relished the challenge of trying to get them resources in their language to try to increase their health literacy. If it wasn't initially obvious, a nursing education masters was the right one for me to keep my career patient centered. It also prepared me well to be an effective clinical instructor.

Conclusion: Your masters degree should be about the thing that helps keep the patients in your work. Sometimes this will be through direct care, sometimes it might be more indirectly like in Nursing Informatics where you help build systems that enhance patient care and nurses' ability to deliver it.


Where your career goes after a masters degree will depend on many things, including your interests and life circumstances. Wondering about PhD vs. DNP?  Read here. Either one can keep patients the center of your career development and keep you motivated throughout your lifetime.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

There Are Other Masters Degrees Besides a Nurse Practitioner - Part I

It strikes me that many students and nurses do not seem to know about the "other" masters degree options for nurses.  Everyone seems to want to be a nurse practitioner these days.  Now, that's great news for the primary care provider shortage, but we need nurses with masters degrees who can work in other positions and have other skill sets. Let's review the other masters degrees in nursing.  Nearest and dearest to my own heart is Nursing Education.  Remember that really cool clinical instructor you had in your entry-level nursing program --that could be you!  Do you like precepting new hires?  Are you the person on your unit who unofficially keeps everyone up-to-date on the latest evidence?  Do you really enjoy patient teaching, whether in the hospital or community setting?  Do you just like to teach?  Nursing education is the right masters for you.  Skills learned in a nursing education masters cannot be learned on the job.  Cur...

Is it time to get your PhD in Nursing or Midwifery?

 Over the years, I've written a lot about pursuing a PhD in nursing and I'm including midwives because we need more PhD prepared midwives too.  Getting a PhD is a great way to address the problems you've seen on the frontlines of COVID-19, another way to address the social injustices of racism and discrimination on health outcomes, and to make your voice heard by the decision-makers. A third of the 1% of nurses with PhDs will retire in the next five years so we need people to take their place. We cannot lose our voices in all the places where nurses and midwives with PhDs work. Here's a compilation of the posts I've written about getting a PhD and the things to think about as you figure out where you want to apply. PhD or DNP?   This is where many people start when trying to decide on their doctoral-level career advancement. This post has my two cents on the topic. Should you work as a nurse before getting a PhD?   There's a lot of opinions out there on this sub...

Codes

Remember your first code?  That time when you see that first patient under your care go into respiratory or cardiac arrest?  Haven't had one yet?  It will come, soon enough. Responding to a code takes some training.  Simulation has gone a long way in helping new healthcare providers respond better to that first emergency.  It doesn't mean that first time doesn't make you freeze up; make you cold with fear that whatever you do will not be enough; of having to talk to the family, comfort them if things do not go well. Any emergency response requires training.  Anyone who thinks that in the face of danger, they will respond heroically and with a clear head has never actually been in that kind of situation.  Ask any soldier who has gone through battle and many will tell you the first time in the face of real danger did not necessarily go as they had been told in training.  They did not necessarily respond as they thought they would, as they would ...

Translate