Reflective Journal Due Mar. 18th
This week we learned about career development/nursing development and about staffing a unit. I learned that I'm not exactly sure where I would like to end up in my career. I've been interested in several areas of nursing, such as the NICU, case management, nurse administrator, home health, and where I'm currently at. I'm currently working in the medical surgical, ortho, and pediatric units. I ultimately would love writing medical themed children's books and have my husband help me illustrate them; I fear that will be more of a hobby though as I don't think I can make enough money selling books.
One thing that my instructor said in his lecture is that we need to be thinking far into our future because when we're older we probably won't want to be floor nurses anymore as our physical health deteriorates. As we age we are at greater risk for back injuries for example. Becoming a nurse administrator, charge nurse, house supervisor, case manager, nurse educator or other "desk" job may be nicer to our backs.
Regarding scheduling one thing stuck out in Sean's lecture especially: Making a non-set schedule for every nurse each month can take up far too much time. Making a set schedule will save the nursing director or whomever is in charge of the schedule a lot of time. Having flexibility in the amount of shift hours may be best as some nurses only feel comfortable working 8 or fewer hours per shift.
As I was talking with my team in our group discussion, we made a consensus that it's important to pair up new nurses with seasoned nurses, to make sure there are scheduled nurses to be on call, and to have a way to group message/text nurses in case the supervisor needs to ask for extra help for a shift.
The of nursing development was helpful to me, especially as I've been trying to sort out my future plans. I'm almost finished with my BSN and plan on working in my current department for one more year, then certify in med/surg and then possibly move on after that. I have always wanted to work in the NICU so I may try doing that. I also don't mind paperwork so I thought of going into case management as it generally pays more money than a floor nurse.
There are a lot of options; it's so hard to choose.
One thing that my instructor said in his lecture is that we need to be thinking far into our future because when we're older we probably won't want to be floor nurses anymore as our physical health deteriorates. As we age we are at greater risk for back injuries for example. Becoming a nurse administrator, charge nurse, house supervisor, case manager, nurse educator or other "desk" job may be nicer to our backs.
Regarding scheduling one thing stuck out in Sean's lecture especially: Making a non-set schedule for every nurse each month can take up far too much time. Making a set schedule will save the nursing director or whomever is in charge of the schedule a lot of time. Having flexibility in the amount of shift hours may be best as some nurses only feel comfortable working 8 or fewer hours per shift.
As I was talking with my team in our group discussion, we made a consensus that it's important to pair up new nurses with seasoned nurses, to make sure there are scheduled nurses to be on call, and to have a way to group message/text nurses in case the supervisor needs to ask for extra help for a shift.
The of nursing development was helpful to me, especially as I've been trying to sort out my future plans. I'm almost finished with my BSN and plan on working in my current department for one more year, then certify in med/surg and then possibly move on after that. I have always wanted to work in the NICU so I may try doing that. I also don't mind paperwork so I thought of going into case management as it generally pays more money than a floor nurse.
There are a lot of options; it's so hard to choose.
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