Is Your Nursing "Check Engine" Light On?

Do you know the check engine light that occasionally (or frequently) makes itself known on your dashboard? That light is generally a warning that something under the hood needs attention (unless it's my truck, and it just comes on whenever it feels like it). So, nurses, how do you know that your personal  check engine light is on and your nursing engine is potentially in danger of overheating?

Your Nursing Career: Stagnation or Flow?

As nurses, our careers are fed by movement, not stagnation. Nursing can be a very dynamic career path, and how you approach the trajectory of your professional development can be greatly influenced by many aspects of your life. At this point in time, is your career stagnant or flowing?

Thinking Innovatively About Your Nursing Career Development

Your nursing career is yours to create, and every nurse’s path can be unique, innovative, and idiosyncratic with proper care. At the same time, your many obligations and  responsibilities can steer you away from your uniqueness and leave you in a rut of choosing the path of least resistance. There are many strategies for choosing a career journey that fits your vision of who you want to be as a healthcare professional, and it’s worth exploring those strategies for the ones that can most readily move you forward. 

Banishing the Organizational Shadow in Healthcare

Carl Jung once identified the shadow (or shadow archteype) as the unconscious aspect of the personality that the conscious mind and ego don't especially care to recognize as an aspect of the self. Some may refer to the shadow as the entirety of the unconscious mind. In this light, can we also deduce that organizations themselves also have a shadow? 

Making the Case For Your Nursing Expertise

In nursing job interviews and other high-stakes career-related interactions, it's your responsibility to make the case for why you're an amazing nurse and the perfect fit for a particular position or healthcare organization. How do you make the case for who you are and what you bring to the table?

The Three-Dimensional Job Search

When most nurse job-seekers are in the market for a new nursing position, their job search process can be somewhat one-dimensional. From my perspective, a three-dimensional job search strategy is generally much more effective. And when it comes to career development, it's the same thing. One-dimensionsality breeds one-dimensional results -- why not try something more powerful?

When The Nurse Is Stretched Too Thin

In all likelihood, we can all readily agree that nursing is not for the faint of heart. Nurses in many different settings can be pushed to the breaking point, driven to the precipice of burnout, compassion fatigue, and utter defeat. But there is indeed another way.

Your Nursing Career and the Skill of Writing

When we think of the skills that make a nurse a nurse, writing is not the first one that may come to mind. PICC lines, wound care, ventilators, IVs, and physical assessment are the kinds of things we think of, but the power of the pen, as it were, is definitely not in the running (except, of course, for basic nursing documentation). However, I'll posit that writing is a skill that can serve your nursing career in both mundane and powerful ways throughout the years. What's your level of skill as a writer, and do you want to improve?

Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash

Six Reasons to Love Millennial Nurses

The Millennial generation (those born between approximately 1980 and 2000) are the new majority in the 21st-century workforce (see this Pew research study identifying this cohort as 35% of the overall workforce), and Millennial nurses are on their way to dominating the nursing profession.

As one generation wanes and the other rises, power changes hands, and this is happening at this very moment as Generation X and the Baby Boomers reach retirement age and leave the workforce in droves.

Every generation is disparaged and criticized by the generations that came before, and Millennials are no exception. However, I hypothesize that the Millennial generation is going to positively transform nursing, medicine, and healthcare for the better, not to mention society at large.

(Please note: writing about any generation as a whole is potentially problematic due to the fact that generalizations must be made. My apologies in advance for any statements that don't quite apply to everyone -- this is simply an attempt to capture observations of the power and potential that this enormously influential generation holds in its collective hands.)

Photo by William Stitt on Unsplash

Don't Let Your Nursing Career Go Dry

Like desert soil devoid of rain, a nursing career without direction or purpose can dry up, crack, wither on the vine, and leave you feeling barren, lost, and lacking direction. Do you want that to happen to your career? Of course not!

10 Steps to Nurse Entrepreneurship

As a nurse entrepreneur for more than a decade, I've been around the block a few times at this point and have seen so much of the ups and downs of this particular professional journey. While I'm not specifically a business coach, my career coaching practice and experience as a nurse business owner have taught me a thing or two about getting a business up and running — and keeping it going. Nurses come to me on a regular basis expressing a desire to work for themselves, and I have cause to believe that this growing wave has yet to crest. So what is a nurse to do if they feel the entrepreneurial itch? 

The 10,000-Foot View of Your Nursing Career

A few weeks ago, I was speaking with a career coaching client, and we were discussing how scary it can be to make a big change. In talking about the minutiae as well as the big picture, I encouraged her to always come back to the 10,000-foot view. "However," I said, "while the 10,000-foot view is a great thing to keep in mind, it can also give you vertigo."
 

Clouds, thousands of feet over Santa Fe, NM by Keith Carlson

Nurses Leaning Into Uncertainty

Throughout history, nurses have provided care to those in need despite the cultural circumstances or political scenarios at hand. Nursing care, like medicine, is a necessary service that simply needs to be provided in a society at all times. No matter that bullets are flying, elections are being disputed, or a pandemic is raging, nurses are there with their patients even as uncertainty rules the day.

Can You Return to Nursing After a Hiatus?

Many nurses come to me for advice and career coaching when they're ready to return to the nursing workforce after a hiatus. For some, it's just been a year or two, and for others it might have been 15 or more years of staying home to do the noble work of raising children. The question is, how do you break back into the nursing and healthcare universe after being gone so long? It's indeed possible, and there's a lot to do to get there. On the other hand, I will also share ideas of how to keep your hand in the game even if you're not fully employed.

A Pandemic "Marshall Plan"​?

When World War II ended, a massive global recovery plan was initiated, and we enjoy the positive reverberations of that plan to this day. The dawning of 2021 and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic call for nothing less than a similar worldwide initiative. Are we truly ready to collectively embrace this humanitarian call to arms?

The Gallup Poll: Nurses Remain at the Top and Still Need Support

As 2020 comes to a close, nurses have done it again: they find themselves at the top of the Gallup Poll for the 19th consecutive year. With 89% of respondents rating them high or very high for honesty and ethical standards — a 4% gain from one year ago — nurses stand tall as the most trusted professionals in the country.