Administration opportunities in nursing?

Nurses Career Support

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Are there many opportunities to be promoted into healthcare administration as a nurse? If so, does one need a masters in nursing or a MBA? I was just wondering about options for further career advancement. I am not a nurse yet.

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Specializes in Critical Care, Education.

Interesting question - I thought the answer was easy until I started really thinking about it.

Immediate answer - of course there are promotion opportunities. Nursing care must always be supervised/directed by a nurse. As you go up the nursing 'food chain', each succeeding level is led by a nurse.

But then - I thought your question may be more "CEO-related"... as in an executive over more than just nursing or clinical services. And the answer to that is sorta sad :sniff:.

Healthcare does include hospital CEOs who came up from the nursing ranks - but they are far outnumbered by bean counters. I don't know whether it's a gender thing or a nurse thing, but there is definitely discrimination when it comes to the top slots. About half the hospital workforce is nursing, but we have only a fraction of the top jobs.

If you want to rise through the nursing ranks, you will need an MSN - for reasons too numerous to go into in this discussion. There are many types of MSN programs - within these, you can 'major' in administration, informatics, education or take a more clinical route to NP or CNS. There are also a lot of 'combo' MSN/MBA programs - as well as some MSN/JD programs.

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