Not sure if you’re ready for college? Are you unclear about what kind of nursing field will be best for you? Do you just need some breathing room?
Have you ever thought of taking a gap year?
A gap year is a year off between graduations and degrees. The year gives you time to recharge, reassess, explore, and gain real-world experience. But a gap year isn’t a time to just hang out with friends and get a job around the corner.
A productive gap year should be rich with experiences – both personal and professional, but it takes some planning to make the most of your time. You won’t be committed to classes, clinicals, homework, and labs, but you should have a similarly full schedule.
Assess Your Plans
Why do you want to take a gap year? What do you hope to get out of this time? Don’t make the mistake of just going into a gap year without plans, goals, or aspirations. Think about how you can make the year work for you and seek out available opportunities. Talk with others who have had successful gap years and learn how their plans helped them in their current field. Investigate opportunities for internships, paid work, volunteer work, shadowing, and possibly even traveling and working abroad. The more active you are in your gap year, the more you’ll get out of it.
Defer Your Nursing School Acceptance
Don’t take a gap year without having something lined up when it ends. If you are about to enter nursing school or planning to go on to get an advanced degree, you should still go through the process of applying to school. Once you are accepted, you can decide to defer your entrance which secures a spot. By going through the acceptance process before your gap year, you are also freeing yourself from worrying about details and deadlines during your gap year. If you plan on being abroad, the last thing you want to worry about is making sure you have everything you need from half a world away.
Take Advantage of Medical Opportunities
Nursing students and even pre-nursing students might find a gap year helps clarify their areas of interest if they can work and/or volunteer with a medical organization. You can do work close to home or far away. Even if you are taking the year off to make some money to pay for college and you don’t have a job in a medical field, use any spare time you do have to get involved in your field.
Get Out There and Network
Use your year to network and make connections wherever you go. Just because you are taking a year off doesn’t mean you have to be out of the loop. You may not be connecting with professors and other faculty, but you can be active in a local professional organization. Volunteer for leadership roles, connect with other members, and act on any suggestions they have for achieving your goals for the year.
Expect to Get Out of Your Comfort Zone
A gap year should be filled with unfamiliar activities and self-created opportunities. If you feel comfortable in your plans for your gap year, you might not be giving it your best shot. This is the time for you to get out and extend yourself. Meet new people, find out about different nursing careers by shadowing professional nurses or asking for informational interviews. Give lectures on healthy habits at your library, school, or senior center. Start a new meeting group for nurses, nursing students, or other gap year comrades.
Be Honest About Your Attitude
Here the big question – are you self-motivated enough to do what a gap year requires? If you like the structure of class schedules and the ease of finding good opportunities at the career center, then you might not be the best candidate for a gap year. And there’s nothing wrong with that. You’ll have more success knowing what works for you and sticking with it. Some aspects of an unstructured gap year bring about unexpected and wonderful opportunities, but if all that uncertainty makes you uncomfortable, a gap year might be a tough adjustment.
Seriously assess your gap year motivations and your determination to make this opportunity a very specific step toward a goal. Are you ready?
Lots of professionals say they just don’t have time to network. With busy schedules, having a membership in a couple of professional organizations is about as far as they get. Or, some say, they are satisfied with their jobs and not planning on a career change, so why bother going to meetings or networking events?
In addition to the basics like education, communication skills, professional experience, and an affinity for your work, knowing how to network effectively is one of the skills you must have in your toolbox.
You’ve heard all the reasons why networking is important and you know how to work a room. But if you don’t actually get out there and do it, you’re losing a valuable opportunity.
Here’s why you have to make the time to network.
1. Life Is Unpredictable
You might love your job and not plan on leaving, but you could get downsized. Or you might decide to move. Or a family member could have a health crisis. Who knows what life is going to throw at you? But the more people you know and the more connections you have, any new career plan will be easier.
2. You’ll Gain Insight from Talking to Others
Even if you aren’t going to change careers or positions, networking offers tremendous opportunity to bounce ideas off people in your industry or who are like-minded. Are you having a staffing problem? It would be interesting to hear how managers in another location handled the problem successfully. Are you interested in executive nursing positions? A networking meeting is a great place to informally approach someone you admire.
3. You’ll Be Amazed at How Much You Don’t Know
You may not think you know everything in your field, but listening to speakers and hearing from peers in a networking arena will make you sit up and take notice. You will always, always learn something new by networking.
4. It’s Nice to Be with Other Nurses
Let’s face it – it’s fun to talk shop. Other nurses get you. They have a similar drive to help people. They understand why organizing all the nurses’ stations on each floor is important. They get the joys and they’ve lived the heartaches. Being around others in your industry validates your career choice and recharges you. Think of networking time as a way to help recharge yourself, not as a chore you have to do.
Networking takes time and effort, but it goes along way. The personal and professional rewards will be worth every minute you devote to becoming an active networker.
Have you thought about joining a professional nursing association or are you already a member of one? Nursing associations offer a variety of member benefits including opportunities to network and grow your career through continuing education and conferences. It can be a worthwhile investment – if you make the most of your membership. It will impress your boss a lot more if you can say that you are active in your association versus just listing it on your resume.
Here are a few ways to make the most of your nursing association membership:
Take Continuing Education Courses
As a nurse, you should also be a lifelong learner. Some nursing associations like the American Nurses Association (nursingworld.org) offer continuing education courses at a discounted price for members. Classes offered include Bullying in the Workplace: Reversing a Culture and Why Does Conflict Competence Matter?, among many others.
These continuing education courses offer education in areas probably not covered while in nursing school and can give you guidance and confidence in working in healthcare settings.
Network, Network, Network
This is a given, but you should be networking with other RNs and joining an association is a great way to meet other nurses outside of your current place of employment. Share best-practices and gain a supportive network of other nurses passionate about the field.
If your association offers monthly meetings or other gatherings, be sure to attend. You will broaden your perspective and your network.
Volunteer
Does your association have local chapters, committees or events that need volunteers? Rolling your sleeves up is a great way to get to know other nurses, network and make a difference.
Connect with Other Minority Nurses
As a minority nurse, there are nursing associations targeted to specific ethnicities such as the National Black Nurses Association (nbna.org), the National Association of Hispanic Nurses (nahnnet.org) and the Asian American/Pacific Islander Nurses Association (aapina.org).
Joining a nursing association dedicated to minority nurses offers a gathering place for minority nurses to work together toward providing better patient care and outcomes for diverse patient populations.
For instance, the National Black Nurses Association’s mission is “to represent and provide a forum for Black nurses to advocate and implement strategies to ensure access to the highest quality of healthcare for persons of color.”
If you’re a brand new nurse or a veteran nurse, nursing associations have a lot to offer. Consider joining one and getting involved today.
Denene Brox is a Kansas City-based freelance writer.
Image credit: Stuart Miles / freedigitalimages.net
As graduation season quickly approaches, it’s time to start focusing on that first job. It’s becoming increasingly difficult for new graduate nurses to find a job in some areas of the country. New nurses can increase their chances of gainful employment after graduation by employing a few key tips.
Start the Job Search Early
If you’re a nursing student reading this blog and haven’t started your job hunt yet, do so NOW! It’s too tight of a market for new graduates to wait until they graduate to find a job. Start applying to jobs and externships a few months before graduation before slots fill up.
Follow-up
If you have already applied to a few jobs and haven’t heard anything back from HR don’t be afraid to call to check on the status of your application. Some may worry about upsetting the recruiter, but I’ve done this on numerous occasions to my benefit. The worse that could happen is they tell you they are pursuing other applicants. This is actually a good thing. You don’t want to be left wondering if HR doesn’t call back to let you know you weren’t a good candidate for the job.
Network, Network, Network
Tell anybody and everybody you come in contact with that you are a nursing student on the verge of graduating…even if they don’t directly work in health care. You never know who is married to whom, or who has a brother/sister/mother who is in the field. If you know someone personally who works at a facility that can forward your resume to a key person, even better! Use networking to your advantage.
Don’t Be Too Picky
Many nursing students have a goal of landing their “dream job” immediately after graduation. Typically these areas are the ICU, ER, NICU and Pedi positions. I just want to be honest…these positions are hard to get as a new graduate because they are flooded with applications from hundreds of other new grads.
Keep your options open and make a short list of at least 3 areas you could see yourself working. I wanted to work Mother/Baby when I was in school until I did my clinical rotation and found it wasn’t for me. From there I thought ER would be best for me. When I graduated there were no ER positions open so I took a job in Neuro ICU. Looking back on my 9-year tenure in ICU, I can’t say I ever wanted to work ER after becoming a seasoned ICU nurse.
Be Open to Relocation or Commuting
I know this may be a difficult pill to swallow for some, but it’s not practical to think you’ll get a job at the sole hospital in town. Relocation or a longer commute may be necessary. With experience your chances of getting into the hospital of your choice may be easier.
In addition to working as a RN, Nachole Johnson is a freelance copywriter and an author with her first book, You’re a Nurse and Want to Start Your Own Business? The Complete Guide, available on Amazon. Visit her ReNursing blog at www.renursing.com for more ideas to reinvent your career.
What do you say when someone turns to you and says, “What do you do?” Is your quick, standard answer, “I am a nurse”? If so, you might want to practice an elevator pitch – a quick, precise summary of what you do and why you do it so well.
As a nurse, you might think, “I don’t really need an elevator pitch. If someone asks me what I do, it’s pretty obvious – I am a nurse!”
But as obvious as your job title seems, think of all the ways a nurse can work in the profession. You can work for a business, for a hospital, for a school, in a private office, and all kinds of other places in between.
If nothing else, perfecting your elevator pitch forces you to really think about your job duties, professional successes, and the personal qualities that make you so good at doing whatever nursing job you do.
Your elevator pitch should be fast – ideally 60 seconds or less – and should give the listener a memorable, unique snapshot of your job and what your skills do for their organization. The idea is that you never know who you might meet and when you find yourself standing next to the CEO of your hospital, you can present a polished, professional, and impressive portrait of yourself.
But the elevator pitch isn’t just rattling off a list of what someone can easily find on your resume. Your primary goal is to show what makes you invaluable to your organization, not just to say how fantastic you are.
Elevator pitches aren’t hard to do, but they are intimidating to start if you have never done one. Some people prepare several pitches, so they can use each one for a different situation. It helps to practice yours and to time it so you eventually say it from memory without any lapses. All that practice really helps and makes your pitch sound natural, not forced.
How can you start an elevator pitch? Some people like to use a question that relates to their direct duties. You can say, “The best advice one of my patients ever gave me was . . .” or one that highlights their team, “Did you know the maternity team increased patient satisfaction by 10 points last year?” Once you finish your anecdote and you have your listener’s attention, introduce yourself. “I am Jane Doe, and I am a maternity nurse at Local Hospital.” Then tell a little about your successes – elaborate on that patient satisfaction increase, the money your unit saved after implementing a new hand-off routine, or the great history your team has for getting patients to follow through on discharge instructions for diet or wound care or something similar.
Practice so your pitch feels comfortable and comes naturally. You can use variations of your pitch at networking events, at conferences, or even the next time you find yourself next to someone you want to impress in an elevator!
