Nurse Mentor

 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...

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...