Exploring Different Career Progressions for Nurses

Nursing is a diverse industry with various career progression paths for individuals to choose from. Through career advancement, nurses can gain new skills, stay on top of innovative medical technologies, and achieve a more fulfilling work experience. Different levels of schooling will result in different opportunities, so it’s important to understand whether you’re looking for a dnp career or something that requires less intense prerequisites. While many of the skills and responsibilities in different nursing roles are similar, each one has distinct elements that can make it more appropriate to specific individuals. Therefore, nurses must understand the complexities of these potential advancement opportunities to establish long-term career goals. This article explores different career progression paths that nurses can take.

Different Nurse Specializations and Career Progressions for Nurses

Nursing work has evolved over the last century, including the introduction of care specializations for nurses with specific knowledge and experience to practice in certain fields. Through care specializations, nurses can refine their skills, implement evidence-based practices, and develop a nuanced understanding of the challenges and treatments that are relevant to their specialty.

Moreover, care specializations empower nurses to remain on top of emerging trends, technologies, and treatments within their specific domains. Nurses can specialize in various areas, including the following.

What is the progression of nursing?

Adult-gerontology

Nurses wanting to advance their careers may consider specializing in adult-gerontology, especially as the demand for baby boomer healthcare continues to grow. Recent data shows that over 70 million were born between 1946 to 1964. Adults from this era may now depend on healthcare programs for post-retirement medical care. This ultimately requires adult-gerontology nurses, who provide healthcare to seniors from later years until the end of life. As a gerontological nurse, you will work to preserve, restore, and improve your elderly patients’ health and quality of life.

This care ranges from care assistance during recovery and relief from disease symptoms to sickness prevention and elderly wellbeing advocacy. Depending on your preferences, you can work in primary care, where you can prescribe medications and create treatment regimens while employing your abilities in critical care and sensitive cases.

Family Nursing

Family nursing is another field in which nurses can specialize. As a family nurse, you will focus on the care of the family unit. This includes care planning for patients with long-term or severe diseases and prenatal care for expecting mothers.

You may also perform comprehensive diagnostic and laboratory evaluations, carry out routine assessments, write prescriptions and tend to minor injuries. Family nurses can also manage the impact of diseases in wider families and ensure that long-term health issues are prevented.

As family nurses are so versatile, they can fill a vital need in areas with physician shortages. Because of their solid background and training in areas such as pharmacology, medical assessment and anatomy, family nurses can easily transition into becoming nurse practitioners specializing in primary care.

Mental Health Nursing

Mental health nurses are specialized nursing professionals who can evaluate, diagnose and care for patients with cognitive disorders. They usually work together with other medical team members to support and educate patients and their families.

It is, however, worth noting that the responsibilities of mental health nurses go beyond finding immediate solutions to improve cognitive health. They can apply psychotherapy and psychopharmacology strategies to fill the gaps and achieve holistic healing.

You may also participate in policy formulation and healthcare reform. By participating in policy formulation, mental health nurses can express the immediate needs within their field and allow healthcare leaders to establish policies tailored to address them.

Advanced Nursing Practice as a part of Career Progressions for Nurses

Becoming an advanced practice registered nurse is another way for nurses to progress in their careers. As the medical industry undergoes multiple changes, nurses continuously encounter new opportunities, challenges, and practices.

Through advanced nursing practice, nurses can acquire skills that enable them to optimize global health and enhance care quality. If you want to become an advanced practice registered nurse, here are several advanced nursing practice roles that will help you keep pace with the ongoing industry changes.

Clinical Nurse Specialist

Clinical nurse specialists are advanced nurse specialists who diagnose and treat diseases, injuries, and disabilities within their expertise. They also perform laboratory tests, make clinical diagnoses and, in some states, prescribe medications. Depending on their work environment, they can offer support and expertise to a group of nurses by establishing practice changes within an organization and plans that ensure that everyone implements best practices in care delivery.

Unlike typical nurses, clinical nurse specialists can identify healthcare options, develop, and implement interventions, and assess general care delivery. They also work to reduce the length and expenses of hospital stays and enhance pain management practices. Their daily tasks and responsibilities can differ depending on their expertise but can include specialized care plan development and patient information evaluation.

Clinical nurse specialists work in numerous environments because they are trained as field nursing experts. For example, an oncology nursing specialty allows you to work in a maternity ward or clinic, while a mental health nursing specialty opens up the opportunity to work in psychiatric and recovery facilities.

Nurse Anesthetist

Nurse anesthetists are advanced practice nurses in the surgical operating room providing patient care during surgery. They also administer medications to reduce or prevent surgical pain, monitor vital signs, and evaluate patients for any allergies that may interact with the anesthesia.

Along with these responsibilities, they can take on administrative tasks such as managing department finances, training new staff and ordering anesthesia. They work in multiple healthcare environments, such as private clinics, medical and surgical hospitals, and outpatient care centers.

Depending on their work environment, they may collaborate with doctors, anesthesiologists and other medical professionals in offering effective patient care before, during and after surgery. They can also participate in therapeutic and diagnostic procedures, deliver critical care and trauma stabilization interventions, and diagnose and deliver acute and chronic pain management.

Nurse Midwife

Nurse midwives are advanced practice registered nurses among Career Progressions for Nurses who specialize in pregnancy, childbirth, prenatal care and postpartum care. They care for patients from labor through delivery and offer postpartum assistance, gynecological reproductive and preventive healthcare.

During pregnancy, nurse midwives track the health of the mother and the baby and help patients create a personalized birth plan. They work at hospitals, health departments, child birthing centers and clinics.

While their responsibilities can vary, everyday tasks and duties include:

• Confirming and dating pregnancy.
• Educating parents in infant care.
• Performing preventive health screenings and evaluations.
• Delivering babies.

With experience and additional training, a nurse midwife can become a manager or administrator, or go into education.

Family Nurse Practitioner

Family nurse practitioners are advanced practice registered nurses who work with patients from childhood to adulthood in clinical and family practice settings. They concentrate on providing preventive care, tracking long-term health, and assisting doctors with issues that may arise.

They often hold a Post Master’s FNP certificate from a prestigious academic institution like Wilkes University and undergo rigorous training to achieve autonomy. Some of their responsibilities are ordering diagnostic tests, developing treatment plans, managing chronic diseases, maintaining patient records and analyzing patient results.

In some states, they can prescribe medications and act as a primary healthcare provider. Family nurse practitioners can also educate patients on various health aspects by promoting healthy behaviors and ensuring that they are aware of any potential health risks.

Nursing Leader

Effective leadership is no longer a trendy phrase within nursing circles. As change continues to permeate the industry, the demand for competent individuals who can act as boardroom influencers and administrators within academia, technology and hospital work becomes greater.

Nursing leaders inspire and influence others to achieve their maximum potential by driving positive organizational change. They communicate expectations to their teams and urge them to achieve established goals. Nurse leaders also work toward creating a collaborative environment between nursing staff and other healthcare teams. Doing so ensures that everyone can navigate complexities, avoid conflict, move toward a clear understanding, and establish a common ground that eventually leads to efficient task execution.

Nursing leaders must learn to delegate and assign tasks to their team members to improve overall efficiency. This means understanding each nurse’s strengths, specialties, and weaknesses. This way, nurse leaders can distribute duties effectively, improve patient care, and ensure that everyone is happy.

By becoming a nurse leader, competent nurses wanting to progress their careers can influence and shape the direction of patient care, health policies and organizations. Nurse leaders have a platform to advocate for patients and other healthcare professionals by ensuring that their voices are heard in meaningful industry discussions.

Nurse Educator is among the Career Progressions for Nurses

Working toward becoming a nurse educator is another alternative for nurses wanting to advance in their careers. The American healthcare system is facing countless changes, but nothing is more pronounced than the academic-practice gap. Academia is disparaged for developing nurses who are unprepared to participate in patient care, while practice settings are criticized for setting unrealistic expectations for new graduates. The stark contrast of theoretical education with the performance of nurses in the healthcare setting can lead to the inappropriate use of scientific resources and adherence to old clinical methods.

Nurse educators are responsible for grounding academics in the realities of clinical practice and competency. These professionals are registered nurses who build a robust foundation for bridging the gap between practice and academia. They conduct practical examinations that are grounded in the profession’s realities to reduce the practice-theory gap and stay on top of new research, technological advancements, and techniques.

They also collaborate with healthcare faculty and clinical rotation managers to ensure a positive academic student outcome. This includes ensuring the assignment of nursing students to clinical sites, which involves a combination of curriculum requirements, student preferences and site availability. Through this process, nurse educators can ensure that assigned clinical rotations align with the specific learning goals established for each student.

Furthermore, nurse educators help aspiring nurses adjust to an interdisciplinary team by creating opportunities for everyone to practice techniques and improve their problem-solving skills. By introducing a collaborative framework from the get-go, nurse educators can promote meaningful student discussions and self-reflection activities regarding their clinical experiences.

Skills Required for Career Progressions for Nurses

Regardless of the area in which they choose to specialize, nurses must possess the following abilities.

Communication Skills

Nurses must be proficient at communicating with various healthcare professionals, such as nursing teams and primary care providers. This proficiency reduces miscommunication, promotes shared decision-making, and ensures a sense of working together toward shared goals.

Teamwork and Collaboration Skills

Nurses must learn to collaborate with different healthcare team members to reduce medication errors and enhance the patient’s experience. Although some mistakes are certain to occur, effective collaboration allows nurses to navigate these challenging situations and concentrate on working together to resolve the issue while establishing a sense of community.

Emotional Intelligence

Nurses must be emotionally intelligent in managing the complexities faced in medical environments. When nurses are emotionally intelligent during their interactions with patients and colleagues, they can offer empathy and awareness and better communicate and understand diverse individuals across different situations.

Critical Thinking Skills

With nurses encountering new challenges daily that require immediate attention, they must learn to think critically under pressure to make the right decisions. When nurses can think critically under pressure, they can improve their communication across various patient care aspects and ensure that different providers understand unique client needs, requirements, and treatment status.

Advance your Career Progressions for Nurses

With the nursing industry growing and changing almost every day, seeking career advancement opportunities is a great move. By advancing your nursing career, you can take on more challenging and rewarding roles that offer more autonomy in patient care and lead to increased job satisfaction.

Octavio White

11+ years strategic communications, marketing, and project management experience. I am a trainer at StarWood Training Institute, focusing on online courses for project management professionals.