When you work in healthcare, there are a lot of benefits you get from your time and from the role. Not only are you helping yourself, but you are also benefiting the lives of others and helping to improve their quality of care along the way. When you focus on growing and advancing your career, you focus on being the best professional that you can be. Regardless of the program you opt for, there are numerous medical career certification programs to pick from. At times, you may feel like this is a challenge you cannot overcome. However, more often than not, you will find that advancing and growing your career helps you with personal development as much as with professional development.
Table of Contents
Knowing Your Starting Position
You need to establish your starting point to get started on the right foot with your career goals and ambitions. What position do you currently have, and what role are you starting from? Are you starting within a role that you love and enjoy, even if it is an entry position? Or are you starting from a semi-skilled role that you want to leave? Knowing where you are starting from is important, as you will struggle to push forward without gauging what you are doing first. You may find that you are feeling signs it is ready to move on, or you may be getting itchy feed to progress. Before you move with these feelings, you must establish where you are at this moment in time.
A Self-Assessment is Crucial
Knowing this starting point and then undertaking a self-assessment is the beginning of your new and exciting journey. Within your self-assessment, you need to look at your skill set. You also need to evaluate where weaknesses and opportunities exist. If you are not conducting a thorough assessment of your skills and your role and future, how will you know what to change and improve, and how will you know where the potential exists? If you are struggling to get started with an assessment, you can utilize the help and guidance of others, but you can also look at utilizing online tools. This assessment is critical to your career planning and future, so take the time to understand the process completely.
Deciding on a Career Path
After spending time conducting a self-assessment, you then need to decide on a career path. Decide how you want to move forwards, and decide which path is right for you. If you are not happy with your role in healthcare at the moment, then make changes because it is never too late. If you are still stuck or indecisive on career paths, why not look around and see what other health professionals are doing? Sometimes you can draw on a lot of inspiration from others, and this inspiration can give you much-needed direction. When you have clarity, you then have focus and direction. All of these elements are essential for growing and advancing your healthcare career.
Looking at Other Areas of Healthcare
When you are defining a career path, you may find that you want to look at other areas or sectors within the healthcare industry. Being able to fully utilize the skills, knowledge, and awareness that you hold is imperative to development. You may find that other healthcare areas give you better professional development opportunities. Changing to another area of healthcare or even another area of practice may feel daunting. However, nothing is stopping you from changing your direction or changing your specialism. Weighing up the pros and cons for each area of healthcare is important, as you want to be sure that if you make a move, it is the right one.
Establishing Goals and Ambitions
Once you have identified what career path you want to follow and ascertained the area you want to be involved in, goals and ambitions are next. You will not be successful in growing and advancing your career if you do not establish goals and ambitions. When you are setting out clear ambitions and goals, always make sure that they are realistic. For instance, a realistic ambition may be to step into a leadership role within five years. Or, you may find that a realistic goal is to start enhancing your education within the next 12 months. Goals and ambitions that you set yourself can be guidelines for your progression and advancement. They can help you move in the direction you want, and within a timescale you are happy with.
Utilizing Your Experience and Knowledge
You have a lot of experience and knowledge as a professional that you can draw on. This may be a period of experience you have gained directly through the healthcare industry, or it may be the experience and knowledge you have collected over previous roles. Learning how to harness this experience and knowledge and understanding how to utilize it is going to be crucial to your future. If you are not utilizing what you already hold, you will find that you will waste a lot of time covering all old ground. Take time regularly to evaluate your experience and knowledge. See how you can directly (or indirectly) apply it to your current role and or your future career. Drawing on experience and knowledge can help you unlock potential and skills you never even knew existed!
Investing in Furthering Your Education
To push your career to the point you want, you will need to invest in furthering your education. When you further your education, you improve your knowledge. You also take the opportunity to be more specific about what role or area you want to work with. When you are furthering your education, you may wish to look at studying for a post masters FNP certification online as this can be game-changing for your nursing career. Or, you may wish to look at studying leadership, to help you become a great leader. Your education will always play a key role in your job and in your future roles. Investing in your education is a must for your professional and personal development. When employers know that you wish to invest in yourself, you may also find that they want to invest in you, too – helping you shape your future and realize your true potential.
Reaching Out and Networking With Other Professionals
As you work on growing and advancing your healthcare career, it is important that you realize that you are not on your own. Taking your time to reach out to other professionals and networking with other professionals can allow you to see opportunities you may have overlooked previously. When you reach out and network with others, you build a professional circle that allows you to find new opportunities. You also get the chance to see what others are doing and how you can invest more in self-development and growth. Networking can be time-consuming, and to ensure it is effective and conducive to your career, you will need to set clear and defined goals for what you want to achieve. Taking advantage of both online networking and offline opportunities will allow you to build a diverse and varied network.
Look For a Mentor
There are already lots of healthcare professionals in the industry that you can utilize. Finding a mentor and getting one on board can help you grow as an individual and as a professional. A mentor can share their experience with you and help you assess what is best for you and your career. When you get a mentor on your side, you may find that you have them in situ for a year or perhaps even longer. To get the most out of the mentorship you receive, you must establish goals. When you have a clear action plan to follow, you can best utilize a mentor’s experience, knowledge, and awareness. When it comes to finding a mentor, you may wish to reach out to the educational provider you are (or have studied with). You may also wish to reach out to the professional bodies and unions that you are part of.
Stepping Outside of Your Comfort Zone
To grow as a professional, you are going to need to step outside of your comfort zone. You are going to need to push yourself a little harder than you originally thought. Stepping outside of your comfort zone and expanding your knowledge and awareness is going to help you develop into a well-rounded professional. Knowing your limits and knowing your capabilities is one thing. However, pushing yourself that little bit further can help you uncover new skills and knowledge that you never knew before. When you step outside your comfort zone, you grow and develop, and you see things differently and from another viewpoint.
What Are You Passionate About?
Passion can get you a long way when it comes to career growth and advancement. If you are not passionate about where you are going and what you are doing, then you will never truly succeed. To find out if you are passionate about a role or position, then look at how you finish each day. Monitor your moods and behavior, and see if you are happy and content (even when you are tired or exhausted). All roles and careers in healthcare can be demanding. However, when you have passion, you can achieve so much more. So, are you passionate about raising care standards, or are you passionate about being a nurse or nurse leader?
Taking the Initiative
When you know what you want to achieve, you are going to need to uncover where your drive and motivation exist. You must be prepared to lead and take initiative in your role and career. You will find that if you do not push yourself, others will not back you (or support you). Taking the initiative in your career and in your future can be challenging, especially when you are pushing for more. It involves looking out for yourself and looking out for others (including team members) too. Once you start to overcome hurdles and obstacles, you will build your confidence. You will find in this process that you are capable of so much more.
Investing in Personal Growth and Development
As you look at growth and advancement, you will see that it is not all about professional development and growth. A large part of this process is understanding how important personal growth and development are. Improving how you act as an individual and even how you work with others can have an impact on your career goals and plans. Aspiring to be a better individual and team player will help you grow, but it will help you build resilience too. When you have these two key factors taken care of, you will find that nothing is stopping you or hindering you from achieving your goals and ambitions.
Rewriting and Editing Your Resume
Your resume says a lot about you. It states where your experience lies and where your potential exists. Quite often, you will find that you are underselling yourself on your resume. Taking a fresh look at what you have written and included is always positive. If you are not regularly evaluating and assessing your resume (or even updating it), you will find it becomes irrelevant. When a resume is irrelevant, you will have to work harder to promote yourself and further your career.
Have a Career Timeline
You have career growth and advancement within sight. However, to ensure it is achievable and realistic, you will need to have a career timeline to follow. A career timeline will indicate what you want to achieve and when. Career timelines will give you the structure for your efforts and help you to establish what is important (and essential) in your career and growth. If you do not have a timeline to work towards, then you may find that your ambitions become even harder to achieve and realize. Of course life can be unpredictable and things might happen that throw your timeline out, but that is okay, a career can be put on hold and picked up again later.