9 Skills You Need to Hone To Grow In Your Nursing Career

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Nurses are some of the world’s noblest people who also work in one of the world’s noblest and most well-respected professions. They are heroes who go the extra mile to provide the best care for their patients. Nurses treat everyone with kindness and respect, despite putting in long shifts. 

In addition, they also risk their lives to save the lives of others. Prime examples are military nurses and regular nurses during the COVID pandemic. 

Military nurses can get deployed to war zones which can be dangerous as anything can happen. Regular nurses also performed courageously during the recent pandemic where they risked getting infected while providing care to patients is a fine example. 

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Some Things To Know About The Field of Nursing

  1. As someone passionate about growing in nursing, you should know a few things. Firstly, nurses enjoy greater job security as compared to other professionals. The increase in demand for nurses is due to the aging baby-boomer population and close to retirement nurses. 
  1. Employers also offer various benefits like health insurance, pension plans, vacation days, paid leave, and discounted gym memberships. Last but not least, the popularity of RN to BSN Programs Increased in Texas because it provides registered nurses a way to further career growth. 
  1. Employers are also offering lucrative salary packages to secure the services of talented nurses. Nurses earn about 75.5K annually as per the Bureau of Labor Statistics. With that said, let’s look into skills you need to master in your nursing career.

Effective Communication And Active Listening Skills

As a nurse, you will have to communicate with patients, their family members, and the relevant medical teams. You must also actively listen to your patients’ concerns to effectively evaluate health issues and develop appropriate treatment plans. 

In addition, you will have to explain the treatment plan clearly for patients to understand. Additionally, you will also be responsible for training and managing nursing assistants and practical nurses. 

Lastly, you have to communicate with the other medical professionals every day, making effective communication and active listening skills an integral part of the job.

Critical Thinking

Being able to think on your feet is critical for nurses that encounter new patients daily. These nurses have to be well aware of prevalent health issues and new symptoms. Also, existing patients may come back with new symptoms or respond poorly to their medication, or their health conditions change completely. 

As a nurse, you must think logically, especially when under pressure, and make the right decisions as mistakes can prove fatal.

Detail Oriented

Paying attention to detail is another crucial skill in the nursing profession. You will face many life or death situations, and any mistake can be fatal for your patients. Therefore, you must ensure that your patients get the right medicine at exactly the right time and in the exact dosage recommended by the doctors. 

Being Flexible And Adapting to Situations As They Come

Most days, you will have to be on your toes as anything can happen. The treatment plans for your patients and your timings can change anytime. In addition, your patients can have bad days, and medical paperwork can get delayed or fast-tracked. 

Furthermore, your colleagues can request your help on cases, catching you off-guard. As a result, adapting to the new situations that come your way is critical. 

Passion For Learning

Nursing is an ever-changing field. If you want to be a nurse, you must have a passion for learning because you must renew your nursing license every two years. For that, you will have to revise old information and learn new information. It is a common practice in the nursing field to keep you at the forefront of your discipline.

Patient Care

Patient care is the heart of nursing. To provide patients with proper care, you must know how to assess patients’ health and develop appropriate treatment plans. In addition, you must listen to their concerns. All of this requires proper training. That is where nursing schools come in. They teach you many things, including:

  • Fundamentals of nursing
  • Delivering patient care across all fields (pediatrics to geriatrics)
  • Conducting physical and psychosocial evaluations
  • Create treatment plans that work
  • Managing cases
  • Legal and ethical standards

After completing the program, you will have the knowledge and skills to be a competent nurse.

Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR)

CPR is one of the core skills for nurses and is used in an emergency to save someone from breathing obstruction. Experts at the American Heart Association state that timely CPR can triple the chances of survival after a heart attack. Thus, nurses must learn it in nursing school or before going to nursing school.

Life Support & Advanced Cardiac Life Support

Life support and advanced cardiac life support are staples in nursing. Mastering life support can improve your knowledge, skills, confidence, and effectiveness at work. 

After learning life support, you master advanced life support, a critical life-saving skill to save someone having a heart attack. It is also essential because heart attacks are a problem in the US. Every year, over 400k people lose their lives to heart attacks. If you master advanced life support, you can save many lives.

Emergency & Critical Care Nursing

Nowadays, most nurses work in hospitals, and only a few deal with regular patients. Most nurses, however, deal with new patients and emergencies every day. Thus you must have an in-depth knowledge of emergency services in healthcare. 

In addition, you must be fully prepared to work in a fast-paced, high-pressure environment. Furthermore, you will be working with patients in intensive-care units suffering from grave and complex health conditions. You will have to keep an eye on them as their situation can change at any time.

Conclusion

Nursing is one of the most rewarding career paths, which allows you to impact your patients’ lives. 

However, it does require a lot of hard work. You will often work long shifts to provide care to patients and teach them about aftercare. In addition, you will also comfort the patients’ families train novice nurses about healthcare practices. 

Becoming a nurse is no walk in the park either. Any decent program will take a challenging and hands-on approach in preparing you to become a nurse. Pressure will be your best friend as you try to meet critical deadlines, master lab skills, and take demanding exams. At times you will feel exhausted, burnt out, and even defeated. It is, however, all worth it in the end.