Metacognition: Thinking About Your Thinking About Your Nursing Career
In the world of nursing and non-nursing education, metacognition is a common pedagogical concept for nurse educators to consider when working with students on the path to becoming licensed healthcare professionals. Metacognition is at its most basic the act of thinking about your thinking. Aside from its commonplace setting of education, metacognition can be also considered in terms of how we approach our nursing careers and professional lives. So let ' s stop and think about our thinking, shall we?Photo by Ricards Zalmezs on UnsplashMetacognition and the Earnest NurseWhen you think about your nursing career...
Source: Digital Doorway - February 18, 2019 Category: Nursing Tags: career career development careers healthcare careers nurse nursing nursing careers Source Type: blogs
Six Steps to Being a Better Nurse Communicator
One of the most important non-clinical skills for a nurse to develop is strong powers of communication. Nursing care is built on the foundation of communication -- both patients and colleagues figure largely in a nurse ' s world, and being able to listen well and speak your truth clearly is absolutely essential both on the job and in your daily life. Photo by Jason Rosewell on UnsplashConversations AboundThe work of a nurse in the clinical space -- whether in home care, dialysis, entrepreneurship, ambulatory nursing, or the assisted living facility -- is informed by communication and conversation. Nursi...
Source: Digital Doorway - January 28, 2019 Category: Nursing Tags: career career development career management careers healthcare healthcare careers nurse nurse careers nurses nursing nursing careers Source Type: blogs
Nurses, Parachutes, Stools, and the Career You Truly Want
Being a nurse is a wonderful career and avocation. In the course of attempting to build an amenable lifestyle and workstyle, things can get confusing, but there are plenty of resources for the earnest nursing professional who wants support in taking their career to the next level.Photo by Lindsay Henwood on UnsplashWhat Color is Your Parachute? In 1970, author and career guru Richard Nelson Bolles self-published the seminal book,What Color is Your Parachute. In 1972, it was published by Ten Speed Press and has been consistently revised ever since and is now available in 22 languages.In the new edition u...
Source: Digital Doorway - January 16, 2019 Category: Nursing Tags: career career development career management careers healthcare careers job search jobs nurse nurse careers nurses nursing nursing careers Source Type: blogs
So You Want to be a Nurse?
Deciding to become a nurse and enter the worlds of nursing, medicine, and healthcare is a courageous act. If you want to be a nurse, doing your due diligence and truly understanding what healthcare and nursing are all about is definitely a smart preliminary strategy. Once you learn more, this momentous career decision may set you on the road to becoming a highly valued nursing professional.Add captionThe Allure of NursingNursing holds a certain allure in our society -- after all, nurses are ranked as the most trusted professionals in the United States year after year in the Gallup poll. This well-deserved esteem that the g...
Source: Digital Doorway - January 7, 2019 Category: Nursing Tags: career careers healthcare healthcare careers nurse nurse careers nurses nursing nursing careers nursing students Source Type: blogs
Be Yourself, Nurses -- Everyone Else Is Taken
Owning and stepping into your own genius as a nurse is important; and genius is, of course, relative for all nurses. At times, we can lose heart and feel that we just can ' t become the person or professional we thought we could be; however, seeking our own individual path is paramount when it comes to creating a career that feels tailor-made just for us, and not just a path someone else said was the best one to follow. Whether you feel like an impostor or your career has grown stale, there ' s nothing you can be other than yourself; and if you ' re trying terribly hard to be just like someone else (or do what others ...
Source: Digital Doorway - December 30, 2018 Category: Nursing Tags: career career development career management careers nurse nurse career nurses nursing nursing careers Source Type: blogs
10 Strategies for Feeding the Nurse's Inner Life
In managing their careers and busy lives, nurses can be very focused on the " outer " aspects of life and work: family, chores, shopping, resumes, job-hunting, pursuing education, social media, etc. But how do we keep the nurse ' s inner life fed and watered? Let ' s explore 10 strategies for cultivating that inner life and nurturing happiness, wellness, and personal/professional balance as 21st-century nurses with very full lives and careers to grow.(Note: please see this blog post ' s companion podcast,episode 186 of The Nurse Keith Show, for further exploration of this topic.)Photo by Atolu Bamwo on Nappy.coFinding Your...
Source: Digital Doorway - December 24, 2018 Category: Nursing Tags: career career development career management careers healthcare careers nurse nurse careers nurses nursing nursing careers Source Type: blogs
Nurse Specialist or Nurse Generalist?
Nurse specialists and nurse generalists are both common within the nursing profession and 21st-century healthcare, and both serve important purposes in patient care as well as non-clinical settings. What does it mean to choose to be a specialist or generalist? What are the repercussions for your nursing career? And how can one accomplish both?Note: pleaseclick here to listen to this blog post ' s companion podcast episode.Photo by wang dongxu on Unsplash.comNurse Specialists MatterIn both medicine and nursing, generalists and specialists both serve many important purposes. Choosing which one to be can be difficult bu...
Source: Digital Doorway - December 10, 2018 Category: Nursing Tags: careers healthcare careers nurse nurse career nurse careers nurses nursing nursing careers Source Type: blogs
5 Actions for Overcoming Nursing Career Attention Deficit Disorder
In the midst of a fast-paced, 21st-century life, it ' s possible for a hard-working nurse to experience what I call Nursing Career Attention Deficit Disorder (NCADD). In this context, the nurse in question loses sight of her goals and dreams, instead becoming scattered and distracted by life ' s myriad responsibilities and demands; she ' s pulled in multiple directions and feels like she ' s running around like a chicken with her head cut off. Can NCADD be turned around? Can our distracted minds be tamed in the interest of developing a more satisfying nursing career?Photo by chuttersnap on UnsplashAn Underst...
Source: Digital Doorway - November 26, 2018 Category: Nursing Tags: career career development career management careers healthcare careers nurse nurse careers nurses nursing nursing careers Source Type: blogs
What's On Your Nursing Career Runway?
Your nursing career can feel like a busy airport, a marathon, a bus terminal, a rickshaw ride, or a taxi careering the wrong way down a one-way street. If your nursing career is an airport, and you ' re readying your plane on the runway in order to take flight, what ' s on your runway and who ' s behind the controls?Photo by Josue Isai Ramos Figueroa on UnsplashWho ' s in the Cockpit? In terms of your nursing career airplane that ' s ready for take off, who ' s in the pilot seat? Who ' s the co-pilot, and who are the flight attendants?Is your inner career co-pilot a critical mother or overbearing father...
Source: Digital Doorway - November 11, 2018 Category: Nursing Tags: career healthcare healthcare careers nurse nurse careers nurses nursing nursing careers Source Type: blogs
Nurses, Nursing, and the Nature of Suffering
In the course of many nurses ' healthcare careers, witnessing the illness, suffering, and death of others is commonplace. From dialysis and med-surg to home health and the ICU, nurses create therapeutic relationships with patients and their families, providing spiritual and emotional comfort, compassion, and expert skilled care based on many decades of nursing science and evidence-based interventions.Aside from witnessing the challenges faced by others, nurses are themselves human beings with their own life experiences, victories, and suffering. How a nurse navigates their own personal suffering plays a role in determining...
Source: Digital Doorway - November 4, 2018 Category: Nursing Tags: healthcare nurse nurses nursing Source Type: blogs
Are You Feeling Spooked by Nursing?
Are you feeling spooked by your nursing career? It ' s Halloween week, and it seems natural to examine our careers for skeletons in the closet, ghosts that haunt us, and old stories that just don ' t fit anymore. Are you ready to dive in and see what we can see?Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash The Ghosts That Haunt YouAre there ghosts that haunt your nursing career? Are there patients, colleagues, errors, or miscalculations that still populate a painful place in your mind and heart? Are there things from the past that cause you emotional, psychological, or spiritual pain?Sometimes we need to let go of the...
Source: Digital Doorway - October 29, 2018 Category: Nursing Tags: nurse nurses nursing nursing careers nursing identity Source Type: blogs
10 Steps to Nurse Entrepreneurship
I recently attended the 2018 annual conference of theNational Nurses in Business Association(NNBA) and I was reminded that many nursing professionals would like to be business owners but aren ' t sure how to get started. That lack of business acumen is both prevalent and understandable.While I ' m not specifically a business coach for nurses, my career coaching practice and experience as a nurse entrepreneur has taught me a thing or two about getting a business up and running.Photo by rawpixel on UnsplashWhat Does A Business Do? Before we get to my top tips for launching your nurse-run business, let ' s...
Source: Digital Doorway - October 22, 2018 Category: Nursing Tags: entrepreneurship National Nurses in Business Association NNBA nurse entrepreneurs nurse entrepreneurship nursing Source Type: blogs
Nursing Jobs, Cost of Living, & Where to Hang Your Hat
In my work as a career coach for nurses and healthcare professionals, I frequently witness those who work in nursing struggling with decisions related to finding work and the relative cost of living in terms of where they live or where they might move.Making decisions about your workstyle and lifestyle can be fraught with anxiety and concern about the future -- let ' s unpack that conundrum.Photo by Joey Csunyo on UnsplashWorkstyle and LifestyleFiguring out where to live and work can be a difficult choice. On the one hand, you want to earn up to your potential and receive the highest possible wage according ...
Source: Digital Doorway - October 1, 2018 Category: Nursing Tags: advanced practice nurses career career development career management careers healthcare careers job search nurse careers nurse practitioners nursing nursing careers Source Type: blogs
Day Shift vs. Night Shift: A Consistent Nursing Dilemma
As a career coach for nurses, I receive a lot of questions and complaints about nursing careers, and one of the most contentious and confusing issues for many nurses is whether to work days or nights. Perhaps you, dear Reader, have experienced such confusion yourself.Days vs. nights is an old nursing puzzle that so many nurses face:Do I work nights and get the differential while ruining my social life, or do I work days and run my tail off when the residents, surgeons, NPs, and doctors are on hand all day to send me running with new orders and admissions?When I was decided to go to nursing school, my wife was very supporti...
Source: Digital Doorway - September 24, 2018 Category: Nursing Tags: career career development career management healthcare careers nurse nurse career nurse careers nurses nursing nursing careers Source Type: blogs
Nurse, Throw Your Hat Over the Wall
In your nursing career, have you ever wanted to get something done but never had the gumption to make the commitment and just do it? Well, there ' s an old Irish proverb that says, "When you come upon a wall, throw your hat over it and then go and get your hat. "In the context of your nursing career, I like to think of this saying in terms of you putting some skin in the game and making a commitment to do what needs to be done, no matter what obstacles may appear to be in your way. What are you avoiding? What are you waiting for? Is there a deep end you just need to dive into?The Deep EndMany of us have a history of playin...
Source: Digital Doorway - September 17, 2018 Category: Nursing Tags: career career development career management careers healthcare careers nurse nurses nursing nursing careers Source Type: blogs
