Your Nursing Career Recipe
All good recipes start with an idea and are then created using the best ingredients and techniques for bringing a successful dish to life. Your nursing career is no different — it’s made up of essential ingredients that work synergistically, with the result being a professional trajectory unique to you and your taste for professional development and personal fulfillment and satisfaction.
It Begins With a Vision
Any chef can tell you that, to create something new, they must first have a vision for what they want. Are they attempting to invent a new signature dish to put their restaurant on the map? Are they looking for a classic flavor profile or something daring and inventive? Does their menu need an interesting new salad, a hearty winter stew, or a fabulous dessert? Whatever it may be, a vision is necessary for the creative process to begin.
The same is true for your nursing career. You didn’t choose to go to nursing school in a vacuum. Perhaps you, a friend, or a loved one received stellar nursing care during a significant illness or following a major injury, and you were so inspired that you wanted to become a nurse and do the same for others. Or maybe your great aunt and mother were both nurses, and it’s a family tradition of nursing passed down through the generations.
Like any good recipe, the first inkling of your desire to become a nurse came from somewhere, and it was this initial spark that led you to figure out what essential ingredients were needed to create the nursing career of your dreams. And so, at this point, you rolled up your sleeves, gathered your initial ingredients together, and finally got cooking.
The Essential Ingredients
One of the most essential ingredients for beginning a successful nursing career is your education. Like going to the store or farmer’s market to find the best ingredients, getting your nursing career starts with shopping around for a nursing program. Once you find your program, you may discover that prerequisites are the missing ingredients that must be digested before you can submit your application.
Once you’re in school — and after you graduate — accumulating essential nursing skills is crucial. Just like you can’t make a soup without some broth, you can’t be a nurse without skills.
While it may begin with learning to take vital signs, perform a bed bath, do a simple physical assessment, or learn how to give a vaccination or program an IV pump, there’s much more to being a nurse, and achieving more will add additional flavors to what you’re able to do and the roles you’re capable of fulfilling.
As you progress in your nursing career development, things will get richer, like a broth or stew that’s allowed to develop in complexity. Certifications, increasing expertise, and advanced knowledge and skills all add up over time. Before you know it, the novice nurse you once were has transformed into an expert with years of wisdom, talent, and knowledge simmering on the stove of an increasingly successful career.
The Menu is Unlimited
The menu of what you can be as a nurse is essentially unlimited. While the hospital environment offers an array of menu items when it comes to areas of nursing practice, the world beyond the hospital is a smorgasbord of options.
Some nurses prefer to stick with the tried-and-true recipes of the ICU, the ED, telemetry, oncology, stepdown, trauma, neonatal, pediatrics, and L&D, and that’s fine. There’s a place for everyone, and sometimes, a normal-looking menu can still deliver some interesting flavors.
And like some chefs take risks and combine ingredients that others might never picture actually working together, some nurses strike out on their own and work from a menu that other nurses may have never considered. Getting a business degree, learning to build apps, developing medical products, or working as a consultant are all examples of nurses working from unusual shopping lists of ingredients to create a career that feels good to them.
Create Your Recipe for Success
There’s no saying what a successful recipe might be for one nurse instead of another. Even when we begin with the same essential ingredients, one nurse’s eventual main course may differ significantly from someone else’s. Some people like spicy food, and some people have a sweet tooth — there’s no accounting for what tastes good for you or your colleague, but when you know what you like, it’s clear as day.
Only you can create a recipe for career success. Your shopping list of ingredients may involve an advanced degree, finding a few valued mentors, starting a business, getting certified in your area of specialty practice, or some other path you see along the way. You can do nothing wrong, and every choice will hold valuable lessons.
So go ahead. Plan the recipe for your nursing career, go shopping for ingredients, put them together in whatever way you see fit, and remember that you can always adjust the flavor as you see fit. And always remember to wash the dishes—no one likes a messy kitchen.