After graduating school, and passing your licensure examination, you may feel it’s time to take a break and relax. While you should absolutely congratulate yourself, now is not the time to take it easy. In fact, the first several years of your RN career are some of the most important. During this time, you should not only focus on maximizing your current efficiency, but focusing on future RN career moves.
If you’re searching for tips to help boost your current and future career opportunities, then you’ll find the following bits of information may help guide you to the career of your dreams. As always, take these tips and use them as a foundation to achieve your unique aspirations.
Tip #1 | Setting Goals
While this tip may seem too obvious, its importance makes it worth mentioning. At this point in your career, you obviously are talented at not only setting goals, but achieving them. Use this talent to your advantage as you move forward in your life as a Registered Nurse. However, you should make sure that your goals are actually achievable. The key to success isn’t outlining three major goals, but rather, an assortment of smaller, relatively easy goals that keep you moving in the right direction.
Tip #2 | Find a RN Career Mentor
This is perhaps one of the most important tips in this list. Securing a mentor not only helps you acclimate to your new life as a Registered Nurse, but their advice has been refined over years of hands-on experience. Not only can a mentor help guide you throughout your work life, but since they’ve been working in the industry for years, they likely have a large and trusted network. This can help you locate new work opportunities, or connect with professionals capable of offering further guidance.
Tip #3 | Focus on Future Education Opportunities
Continuing education is not only a requirement to maintain your RN license, but also helps guide you to new and exciting career opportunities. You should constantly be thinking abut your future education plans. Is there a specialization you wish to go after? Even if you aren’t sure of a specific specialization, you should at least begin your research. The sooner you begin researching and discussing your future career and education aspirations, the easier and quicker you’ll be put on the right track to accomplish these goals. In fact, many hospitals and medical clinics can help refine your educational and certification pathway. But, this only happens if they know about your goals (refer to Tip #1).
Tip #4 | Work Isn’t Life, Remember This!
Even if you’re extremely passionate about your RN career, who are you outside of the challenging boundaries of a medical unit? The most successful, and happy, RNs are those who focus just as much on their personal life. Remember, your work life is just that, it’s not your whole life. Focus on developing a hobby or a specific activity that’s unrelated to your job. Decompressing after a long shift is absolutely necessary. The worst thing you can do is forget who are you are when you aren’t wearing scrubs. Avoiding burnout is the most essential work tip for any nurse.
