Have You Taken These Steps For Professional Development?
By Brenda Miller, MSN, RN-BC
Graduation, passing boards, landing a job, and working your assigned schedule…once you’ve achieved those milestones, what else is there? If your personal developmental plan stops there, you will no longer provide safe patient care and you are going to quickly become dissatisfied with your job. A brain that is not stimulated becomes lethargic. What can you do to help keep your patients safe, keep your brain stimulated, and achieve a flourishing career? By persistently developing yourself through continued education and/or certification.
Nursing continuing education is often focused on disease processes and treatments. One reason is to help nurses learn about the latest evidence-based practice to stay current and provide quality care. Because the focus is often related to patients, nurses who practice away from the bedside can often overlook their own educational growth related to their role.
Continuing education can often be utilized to only meet the requirements to renew a nursing license. Some have asked how they are to grow professionally when education dollars are no longer available at Premier Health. True, education dollars are no longer readily available to send nurses to seminars. However, Premier Health does provide other avenues for you to grow professionally for free or for a small fee. Here are some examples of resources that are available to you:
- Onsomble: a professional assessment tool that provides you feedback on your strengths or areas that show opportunities for growth
- Course Listing: The Learning Institute will launch a catalog in January 2017 listing courses that are available for you to attend
- CE Center: located in the Healthstream catalog (make sure you have your discipline set to “registered nurse” in your profile to be able to obtain CE); certification prep courses are also available
- Biannual educational training retreat for unit educators
- Leadership classes
- Tuition reimbursement
- Specialty certification; for reimbursement, check with your local facility
- Corporate discounts for select universities: there is a listing on the Learning Institute web page on SharePoint
- MOOC -free online education (not for credit) list of universities/course titles
- Funding for outside continuing education: Check with your local foundation to see if there is support towards continuing education
In summary, continuing education is readily available. It just looks different than it did previously. Now that you know where to find the resources, mark your calendar, set an appointment with yourself, and start walking down the path to your own professional growth!
<<Back to Premier Nursing News-December 2016
Source: Premier Health Nursing
