Management Progression Assistance

Nurses General Nursing

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Hello! I have been an RN for 11 years. I have spent the past 7 years working full-time as a nursing professor. I have my BSN and MSN (nursing education) and I am finishing up my EdD in healthcare leadership. My long-term career goal is a Chief Nursing Officer or Chief Nurse Executive. I have not worked as a bedside RN for the past few years outside of contingent in the Summer (off work as a professor), but I do take students to the hospital for clinical, teach in the skills lab, and teach in the classroom. I also work as a contingent clinical educator for a local health system. I'm also involved in committee leadership, mentoring, and research. Given my upcoming graduation, I decided to look into jobs to transition into a leadership role within the hospital setting. Basically, they do not consider my doctorate degree as any experience or leg up nor do they consider my academic leadership experience as relevant. I have been told by all recruiters that I would need to start at the beginning -- go back to a bedside nurse, then charge nurse, then assistant nurse manager, then nurse manager, then director, etc etc etc.... Any advice here? I'd really like to not go back to a bedside nurse. I love not working nights/evenings/weekends/holidays all the time. I have a lot of leadership experience in academia and I will have a doctorate in healthcare leadership soon. Send help! Any ideas of what I can do here? 

Specializes in Occupational Health.
9 minutes ago, HOPEforRNs said:

Well, an occasional charge nurse is the only option. At all the hospitals in my area.... after you've been a nurse for 2 years you have to go to training to be a charge nurse and you get put in the rotation to take a charge assignment. Being a charge nurse is not a regular assignment - everyone rotates through it. 

Also - I would think you would never find someone with 10+ years of in-house experience in management and leadership willing to take an assistant nurse manager position on a unit. They'd likely want to be higher up than that. Where do you see ANMs requiring 10+ years of leadership and management experience? And if you need 10+ years to get that job... what type of experience is it?

take out the "10+" if that bothers you....the answer remains the same

1 Votes
Specializes in Education, Skills & Simulation, Med/Surg, Pharm.
1 minute ago, sleepwalker said:

take out the "10+" if that bothers you....the answer remains the same

Bedside nursing does not give leadership experience. Nor does it give management experience. And having been a bedside nurse and charge nurse and moved on to leadership/management on the nursing student side... charge nurse is not really a leadership/management position either. I learned WAY more in my first few years in academia that would be relevant to working as a nurse/charge than I ever did actually at the bedside. I think people that work only on the hospital side don't really get what happens on the other side and do not have an appropriate level of respect for it. 

Specializes in Occupational Health.

"I learned WAY more in my first few years in academia that would be relevant to working as a nurse/charge than I ever did actually at the bedside"

This sums up your quandary....you think you did but you didn't and nothing you've done up to this point supports that statement....point blank and period.

I'm sorry if this is not what you want to hear and it's obviously not. You, however, are just not qualified no matter how much you try to rationalize/justify or just plain "nit pick". 

1 Votes
Specializes in Education, Skills & Simulation, Med/Surg, Pharm.
2 minutes ago, sleepwalker said:

"I learned WAY more in my first few years in academia that would be relevant to working as a nurse/charge than I ever did actually at the bedside"

This sums up your quandary....you think you did but you didn't and nothing you've done up to this point supports that statement....point blank and period.

I'm sorry if this is not what you want to hear and it's obviously not. You, however, are just not qualified no matter how much you try to rationalize/justify or just plain "nit pick". 

And going from a bedside RN to a charge RN to leadership on the academic side and then back to a bedside RN and charge RN is going to somehow make me realize how much I didn't know when I went in one direction? Do I have to go back the other way now? Have you worked in both academic leadership and hospital leadership? Or are you trying to tell me I should go do a job I have already done to get experience doing something I have already done a large chunk of? Or are you purely speculating? 

Specializes in Med-Surg/Tele/ER/Urgent Care.
12 hours ago, HOPEforRNs said:

Yet nobody can tell me what I'm missing. Please fill me in. I keep asking but nobody will answer.

 I alread stated very clearly you lack bedside nursing experience.

4 years FT bedside nurse with 2 as a charge nurse. Additional 6 years as a contingent bedside RN (2 shifts a month during the school year, 2 shifts a week

The number of years of experience is variable. Nov 2014 you posted you were about to complete 2 years RN experience.

You make it sound as if you were permanent charge but in other posts it says every one rotated charge.

What else do I need to add to my resume to be competitive for an assistant nurse manager of a hospital unit?

More questions: how many beds did this hospital have? Specialized units as in high level NICU? Trauma designation? How many ER & ICU beds?

Did you get MSN from Walden or Capella as mentioned in other post of 2014? What school are you getting this EdD from? As former faculty I see EdD not equivalent to DNP which in your other post you stated that current employer saw the degrees as equal. 

Where you earn the degrees can make huge difference in future employment. Search on this forum Walden doesn’t have favorable reputation, never heard of Capella.

Interviews for CNO are typically panel interviews, so even if FIL were to “give” you a job, panel interviews may consist of staff nurses, charge nurses and unit managers. If you think we have been tough, what do you think they would sat about your 2 or 4 years you spent as a bedside nurse?

Multiple times many people have told you that you lack both the experience & education for nursing management & leadership. Remember Benner Novice to Expert? Police officers have it right to call rookies for a reason. It sounds like you are trying to convince yourself that you are ready for Nurse manager. Again failure to recognize that you lack the basics.

Specializes in Education, Skills & Simulation, Med/Surg, Pharm.
Just now, PollywogNP said:

More questions: how many beds did this hospital have? Specialized units as in high level NICU? Trauma designation? How many ER & ICU beds?

Did you get MSN from Walden or Capella as mentioned in other post of 2014? What school are you getting this EdD from? As former faculty I see EdD not equivalent to DNP which in your other post you stated that current employer saw the degrees as equal. 

Interviews for CNO are typically panel interviews, so even if FIL were to “give” you a job, panel interviews may consist of staff nurses, charge nurses and unit managers. If you think we have been tough, what do you think they would sat about your 2 or 4 years you spent as a bedside nurse?

Multiple times many people have told you that you lack both the experience & education for nursing management & leadership. Remember Benner Novice to Expert? Police officers have it right to call rookies for a reason. It sounds like you are trying to convince yourself that you are ready for Nurse manager. Again failure to recognize that you lack the basics.

I have said multiple times that CNO is my end goal - assistant nurse manager is what I want to make my entry point. No, I am 100% not dumb enough to get hired as a CNO right now. I am not qualified. I am trying to get a job as an assistant nurse manager to start and then work my way up.  My EdD is from my employer. I work for a teaching hospital that is part of a large university. I believe we are in the top 10 largest hospitals in the US with over 1,000 beds and 8 or 9 hospitals on the campus. 

You think that the job I did full-time for 4 years + 6 years contingent (24 hours a month and full-time in the Summer) is inadequate for "the next step" and that I need to go back to doing it full-time for... how long exactly? What piece am I missing from only being full-time in the Summer and otherwise contingent? Or is it because I have been off for 10 months? Or does my primary job being in academia make the other stuff I am doing negate itself since academia is apparently a useless career that anyone off the street can do? 

Specializes in CMSRN, hospice.

Purely from the perspective of a current bedside nurse, I would be very wary of even an assistant nurse manager who hasn't worked full-time at the bedside in seven years and hasn't run charge very often during that time. I would fear that they wouldn't be in touch with the biggest challenges facing the unit and the staff, simply due to the fact that they haven't had to contend with it in the same way as the people they'd be managing. Though your credentials and the responsibilities you've had in your work are undeniably impressive, and may even hold some parallels as you've described, they simply do not adequately assuage those concerns. They are not equivalent to having this actual experience fresh in your mind for you to draw on as a manager.

In addition, you clearly seem to have very negative feelings about "starting over" and having to work odd hours. I feel very uneasy with the view that bedside nursing is frequently viewed as merely a place to start (not just by you, though that is honestly the impression I get from your posts). I worry that people in real life may be picking up some vibes that you don't appreciate the efforts and intelligence of nurses who remain at the bedside for the duration of their careers. I am *not* assuming that this is how you truly feel, but you do sound extremely eager to stay far away from the lifestyle of the very people you would be working very closely with and managing.

As for the weird hours we work as nurses...that, I can completely understand. It sucks! (Those differentials, though...) That being said, no one expects you to do this forever if your goal is to progress in management. I don't think another year or so of current bedside nursing is too much to ask, especially since there will absolutely be times when you need to be responsive to your staff during those times when you would prefer to be off.

I know you are frustrated with these answers, but I honestly don't know what else can be said on this subject. It sounds like your job interviews are echoing the posts here, and whether it's fair or not, you will need to gain additional recent bedside and charge experience to get the next job you want. You need to decide whether this trajectory is worth the extra step. Neither one is the wrong answer; it just depends on your immediate priorities and your career goals.

2 Votes
Specializes in Geriatrics, Dialysis.

While it's not a job in hospital management have you at all considered pursuing an upper level management position outside of acute care?

I honestly don't know that a Director of Nursing position would get you where you want to be as the budgetary and business decisions do not fall on the DON.  while the DON's input is valuable ultimately that position is only responsible for nursing management while it seems hospital upper level management is equally concerned with nursing and business management. 

An administrator position might however be helpful as that positions responsibilities more closely reflects the staff and business management with a focus on health care that the upper management acute care positions seem to be looking for. 

It would at least be seen as relevant experience for a management position in the hospital setting. Of course without the relevant business degree that track might not even be available to you which puts you back at square one.

1 Votes
Specializes in Community Health, Med/Surg, ICU Stepdown.

Is contingent the same as per diem? In that case you mean you have 10 years of bedside experience, correct? 

Specializes in NICU.

Gee ,you must be applying at the wrong places,your lack of any relevant experience would  for sure put you right up there in the top ranks in my place.

Apply for nursing ED and call it a day.

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