New Career In Nursing

MollyJ · Jul 7, 1999

The easiest way that I can think of requires you to narrow down your choices a little bit. What are some roles that are attractive to you??? (You're not committing; just shopping). Let's say *for example* that your list was teacher of nursing, school nurse or clinical nurse specialist in orthopedic nursing. Then you might do some postings on BB's (both this one and others) asking people in these roles what they like about what they do, what they did to get their "dream" job, what background experiences contributed to their job. You might arrange to interview a nurse educator, school nurse or CNS. You would discuss with them their educational preparation and many of the same, above listed questions. Look to your local academic resources and see what special programs they have that might be useful. For example, the school where I got my MSN was fortunate to have adjunct faculty with special expertise in diabetes, leading to preparation as a CDE. You could do a CINAHL search about your roles of interest; often their are journal articles that talk about the roles of nursing specialties.

Think about your current job. Can you build on what you've learned in this job. The answer should, somehow, be "yes." Try to find something you enjoy about your job that leads to specialty.

If you don't already have a BSN, get working on one. Find a high quality BSN completion program that cause you to have interesting clinical experiences. You may have more say about a place that you can do your clinicals and you can use clinicals to try on different kinds of nursing.

Good luck.

rninformatics, DNP, RN · Jul 15, 2000

Check out my web page for info on the specialty of Nursing Informatics http://nurses.nu/homepages/Nurses/angela/