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Getting Into Nursing? The Education And Skills You’ll Need

Around the world, nursing is one of the most compassionate and caring career paths that you can decide to do. Along with offering professionals the option to work in a career that allows them to make a real difference to the lives of the people that they interact with on an everyday basis, nursing is also a career choice that has a lot of rewards when it comes to career progression, potential earnings, job security, and job satisfaction.

Nurses are an essential part of the healthcare system and due to the aging population leading to a shortage of nurses in the US, good nurses are in higher demand than ever before. Over the past eighteen months, the COVID19 pandemic and subsequent healthcare crises around the world have highlighted the importance of nurses today. If you are a caring, compassionate person who enjoys helping others and wants to get started in a highly rewarding, satisfying career path where you can make a difference every day, working as a nurse might be the ideal choice for you.

To be a good fit for a career in nursing, you’ll need to develop a certain skill set and gain qualifications to prepare you for your future work. Read on to find out more about nursing qualifications and the skills you need to succeed as a nurse.

Associate Degree in Nursing:

You can get started as a registered nurse with an associate degree in nursing. However, it’s worth considering that this degree program might be phased out in the future and is no longer the top choice for nurses, with many opting to get a BSN instead due to the fact that the BSN offers better career advancement options and often makes it easier to find employment, with around 80% of employers actively looking for nurses who are BSN-qualified.

An associate degree in nursing qualifies you to take the NCLEX exam and become a registered nurse. However, depending on the state in which you work, you may need to get a BSN at some point in order to continue working. New York State has now introduced the BSN-in-10 rule which requires all nurses to get a BSN within ten years of getting their license. In addition, most advanced nursing degree programs like the MSN or nurse practitioner training programs do not accept associate degrees and will expect applicants to hold a BSN.

Bachelor of Science in Nursing:

The BSN is by far the best choice to make if you want to get into a career in nursing. It is designed to thoroughly prepare you for this career and provide you with the solid foundation that you need to advance your career in the future should you wish to do so. Getting a BSN is an ideal choice for nurses who want their pick of employment opportunities since an increasing number of employers are now looking for BSN-educated nurses to gain Magnet status and provide better standards of care. Studies have found that just 10% of nurses having a BSN can have a significant positive impact on patient care and outcomes, including a lower patient mortality rate, reduced rate of infections in hospitals, and fewer readmissions, along with higher levels of patient satisfaction.

And now there are plenty of BSN programs that offer online options so that you can get your degree from the comfort of your own home and make sure you’re well prepared for a career as a nurse.

Accelerated BSN:

If you already have a degree in a non-nursing subject and want to change your career to nursing, an accelerated BSN might be an ideal choice for you. This degree is designed with career changers in mind and anybody who has already been to college and might not want to spend an entire four years getting another degree to become a nurse. Typically, accelerated BSN programs will last for around half the time of a traditional BSN, allowing you to get qualified as a nurse in just two years. It’s a popular option for applicants who already have a degree and want to get into their new career as quickly as possible or save money by paying less tuition due to studying for a shorter period of time.

Bridge Programs:

If you already have an associate degree in nursing or another nursing qualification and want to get a BSN, there are also bridge programs available that you may be interested in. These programs are designed to build on what you already know and focus on the extra stuff that you’d need to learn to get a BSN. Often, they will not last as long as the traditional BSN program as they are designed to be more straightforward and cut out a lot of the basics that you will already understand.

Nursing Apprenticeships:

If you want to take a different approach to becoming a nurse, you might want to consider an apprenticeship style of qualifying in this role. In a nursing apprenticeship, you will mostly be learning on the job and may be able to earn money while you work rather than paying for tuition. Nursing apprenticeships are becoming more popular and might be the ideal option for you if you prefer to learn in a hands-on setting rather than a classroom.

Advancing Your Nursing Career:

It’s also worth looking into the options that are available if you want to advance your nursing career in the future. Most advanced nursing degree programs will require you to have achieved at least a BSN. The master’s degree in nursing is one of the most popular options for nurses who want to climb the career ladder, and you can choose from a general master’s degree or one that focuses on a certain specialty topic. After getting a master’s degree, you will have options to further your career even more with a doctorate of nursing practice and various postgraduate certificates that are designed to prepare you for a certain role, such as a nurse practitioner.

What Skills Do Nurses Need?

Along with the right qualifications, good nurses need to have a specific skill-set to succeed in this line of work. Nursing is often a highly skilled job but alongside the specific career skills that you will learn as part of your nursing degree program, it also requires several soft skills and transferable skills. These include:

Empathy:

Being a compassionate person who can empathize with others and imagine how their patient must be feeling at the time, even if they’ve never personally been in the same situation, is important for nurses. Patients will often interact with nurses when they are going through some of the toughest, scariest, and most painful times of their lives and as a result might be rude or aggressive. Nurses who have a lot of empathy know that this is nothing personal and are able to react with kindness and help their patients feel safe and cared for. They understand how scary the situation must be for their patient and treat them with compassion and patience, making sure that they feel heard and validated.

Communication:

Good communication skills are absolutely essential in nursing. As a nurse, you are going to be communicating with a lot of people every day. From communicating with your patients to put them at ease and keep them in the loop about their treatment, to communicating with families who might be feeling powerless and helpless and communicating with the other healthcare professionals and nursing that you work with to update them on patients and give instructions, nursing as a career is often all about good communication. To be successful in this role, you’ll need to be able to get your point across clearly and in a way that can be understood. Active listening skills are also absolutely crucial as you will be spending a lot of time listening to your patients and using the information that they give you when making decisions about their care.

Attention to Detail:

To work as a nurse, you will need to be an observant person who pays a lot of attention to detail. There is no room for guessing, making assumptions, or not paying attention when you work in nursing as the risk to the patients is simply too great. Often the best kinds of nurses are the people who always double-check everything. Whether you’re giving a patient a dose of medicine or reading somebody’s chart, it’s important that you pay strong attention to detail, even if you’re coming to the end of a long shift and are tired since one simple careless mistake could have disastrous consequences.

Calm Under Pressure:

Nursing is often a very high-pressure job, especially in areas like the ER, where you will be dealing with an influx of different patients on any given day. Things can change dramatically in seconds when it comes to healthcare, which puts a lot of pressure and stress on nurses and other healthcare professionals to not only keep up with these changes but also make the right decisions under pressure. To be successful as a nurse, you need to be the kind of person who can keep their head under high amounts of stress. While learning how to do this is something that can be improved the longer you have been working at the job, most nurses are already people who thrive in high-pressure situations rather than someone who panics.

Willingness to Learn:

In any area of healthcare, things are always changing and there is often going to be something new to learn. As a nurse, you will be expected to keep up with the changes in healthcare and tested on a regular basis to make sure that your knowledge and skills are up to date. This could involve learning about new diseases, new treatments, new equipment, new policies, and more. As a nurse, you might find that some years into your career path, things are very different compared to when you were studying or when you first started in the role. Because of this, nurses need to be the type of person who enjoys learning new things and is willing to put the effort in to update their knowledge whenever needed.

Physical Fitness:

While it’s not strictly a skill, nurses do have to be committed to looking after themselves and keeping themselves physically fit to keep up with the demands of the job. Nursing can often be a very physically demanding career path that not only has you on your feet for hours at a time but also involves moving and lifting patients. While you certainly don’t have to be a bodybuilder to be successful as a nurse, it’s important that you are willing to put in the time and effort needed to keep your physical fitness high so that you can do your job well. While nurses are there to look after others, they also need to make sure that they are looking after themselves.

Mental Strength:

Nurses don’t just have to be physically strong to deal with the demands of the job. A good level of emotional and mental strength is also needed to deal with some of the traumatic experiences that nurses deal with often regularly. As a nurse, you are going to be there for some things that most members of the public will never have to deal with. People who have experienced life-changing injuries and physical traumas, patients losing their lives, and people suffering from terminal illnesses are all part of the job when you are a nurse, and understandably it can have a huge impact on anybody, especially nurses who are already often naturally empathetic, compassionate, and caring people.

As a nurse, you will need to be very self-aware and able to know when things are getting to you. You’ll need to be willing to put in the effort to keep yourself mentally healthy and strong using whatever means you find the most useful, whether that’s meditation, journaling, or therapy.

Nurses are in higher demand than ever, and for individuals with the above skills, there’s never been a better time to become a nurse. With the right nursing qualifications coupled with your empathy, attention to detail, good communication skills, and willingness to learn while helping others, you could make a great nurse.


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Getting Into Nursing? The Education And Skills You’ll Need

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