Careers are like gardens: we plant seeds with hopes for the future. We water, fertilize, and watch the tender shoots emerge from the soil. With any luck, those shoots turn into thriving, healthy plants.
If careers are like gardens, how are you tending to the garden of your nursing career? Is it flourishing and fertile, or has it become barren, deprived of water, nutrients, sun, and tender loving care?
The Seeds You Plant
In nursing school, you planted seeds to create the first shoots to make up your career’s initial days and years.
At that time, you had ideas for what kind of nurse you wanted to be, the types of work you wanted to learn, the skills you hoped to master, and perhaps what further education you’d need.
With your first job secured, the garden was on its way. Those early days can be as exciting as when the soil you’ve prepared in your garden begins to show promise.
If the seeds of your new career were your vision of the future and the skills, knowledge, and expertise you wanted to develop, then the time you spent learning, practicing, studying, and sharpening those skills was the water and compost that would make those seeds grow.
A Richer Garden
Once the seeds of your career became firmly rooted, you began to wonder how you could make more use of this rich soil you’d so carefully tilled. Every gardener knows that creating healthy topsoil isn’t something to be taken for granted, so once the plants have taken root, it’s time to consider future harvests.
Like a garden, your nursing career can mature and become richer with time. Even as the landscape of your career changes, you can always sow new seeds. You can still add new skills and knowledge after 5, 10, or even 25 years. Of course, you may know what you want to accomplish next.
If you were an amateur gardener, you might have begun with flowers, tomatoes, basil, peppers, and peas, similarly to when, as a new nurse, you started with the simpler seeds of physical assessment, nurse-patient communication, phlebotomy, and wound care.
Like the gardener who expands their repertoire to include squash, pumpkins, eggplant, and other plants that take more expertise, you may add more advanced skills to your nursing repertoire. You may learn to hang chemotherapy, perform complex bedside interventions, interpret ECG rhythms, access arterial lines, or circulate in the OR. Your nursing garden can become a fertile place of learning, and you can reap an impressive harvest with hard work and focus.
Storms, Pests, and Wind
Most gardeners eventually experience disappointment when things go wrong. Hail, frost, and wind can damage plants, and sometimes, plants are lost. At this point, you can do nothing but pick up the pieces and start again.
In your nursing career, you may encounter the pests of bullying, unsafe staffing, compassion fatigue, or burnout. These can be a grave threat to your carefully tended garden. The weeds of boredom and stagnation can also cause your career garden to stop growing.
The winds of change can also damage your career: an economic recession, downsizing, or a corporate takeover may cause you to be laid off from a job you loved.
Storms can also occur in your personal life. A divorce can turn your world upside down and interrupt your ability to tend to your career. The birth of a child can throw you off track professionally. You may need to care for an aging parent or a newly disabled spouse, or you may become ill or disabled and unable to work for a time.
How you weather these storms can have an enormous impact on your career, so the more effort you put in during these hard times, the stronger your garden will be later on.
Harvesting the Fruit
Just like a garden, a nursing career can be a lifelong project. The soil can be amended, new seeds planted, and all sorts of fertilizer added. It’s a labor of love, even when storms and pests make things more challenging.
The fruit of your hard work can be harvested over time. Your BSN can be followed by an MSN or even a doctoral degree. You can add certifications, skills, expert knowledge, and experiences that make the soil richer and the plants healthier and more nourishing.
There can be no end to the harvest if you want to keep your career garden going. It can be expanded, more soil can be brought in, and new seeds can be planted even later in the game. You may write a book, start a business, or otherwise take your expertise and make it even more fruitful. There are no rules or limits other than those you impose on yourself.
Sow seeds that hold meaning for you, water and fertilize with tender loving care, watch your garden grow, and harvest the fruits of your labor. Your nursing career garden is something to be proud of: enjoy it and let it nourish your body, mind, and soul.
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