Nursing is a science of caring. It is a very noble and rewarding career. For those who wish to pursue nursing, you can progress significantly through continuous learning. This means that nursing education goes beyond graduating from nursing school.
Nurses are encouraged to pursue professional and personal growth as they advance their careers. The intention is to expand their opportunities, build expertise, and acquire the latest skills that can be useful in practice.
Besides state and federal requirements, nurses further their education to achieve various certifications. Sometimes, facilities that employ nurses advocate for professional courses and certifications; some even pay partial or full tuition for their staff.
Research has shown that continuing education has many benefits for nurses. Virtually every nurse can benefit massively from pursuing continuing education. This post will reveal the 10 benefits of continuing education (CE) for nurses.
Many nurses consider continuing education as a means to explore new specialties such as nurse leadership, nursing management, psychiatric nursing, and forensic nursing and to attain advanced titles such as Nurse Practitioner (NP), Nurse Educator, Clinical Nurse Specialist, Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist, Certified Nurse Midwife, Certified Clinical Psychiatric Nurse, or Certified Family Nursing Practitioner.
The nurses do this via online classes, distance learning, webinars, seminars, in-person classes, and conferences. Here are the top ten reasons to invest in continuing education as a nurse.
In most states nationwide, nurses must complete a minimum number of hours of CE to keep their license.
The nurses that do not complete the minimum number of hours of CE are at risk of losing their licenses.
Therefore, once you graduate as a nurse and get your license, you should continue your education to ensure you are not at risk of losing your license.
As a new nurse in any state, knowing the number of contact hours required for continuing education in your state is vital. This will help you to make sure you are on the safe side.
Most nursing graduate employers do not pay employees the same thing.
They pay them based on several factors, including CE credits. In many cases, nurses with more nursing CE credits are usually paid more than those with fewer CE credits (all other factors held constant).
This is because the number of CE credit hours obtained during employee evaluations for nurses is usually asked and noted.
So it counts at the end of the day. Therefore, if you want to boost your pay as a nurse, one of the ways you can do so is to ensure you get a good number of CE credit hours every year.
The most crucial reason states and healthcare providers require nurses to obtain a certain minimum number of nursing credits yearly is to ensure their current nursing knowledge.
Nursing is an evolving discipline; what may be acceptable today may not be acceptable tomorrow or a few weeks from now. This is because landmark nursing research papers that trigger a change in nursing practice are published virtually every year.
Thus, every self-respecting nurse must pursue continuing education to ensure they are up to date with all the latest nursing knowledge, evidence, information, rules, and so on.
This will ensure they can continue delivering quality and safe nursing services as per the latest evidence or information.
Do you want to become better at your job? One of the ways you can do this as a nurse is to pursue continuing education. Nursing CE credits cover virtually all topics related to the discipline.
Therefore, whatever area of nursing practice you want to see some improvement in, you can pursue a course in it for your nursing CE.
The most common areas of practice that nurses seek improvement in include regulation, legal, infection control, perioperative nursing, occupational health and safety, patient safety, communication, and leadership.
Of course, you can also pursue a nursing CE course to improve your knowledge in your clinical specialty, e.g., physical assessment, vascular access, pharmacology, pediatrics, neurology, surgical, maternal newborn, neonatal, cardiology, informatics, or emergency.
Nursing often involves direct and constant interaction with patients. And modern patients do ask a lot of questions related to their condition.
Thus, it is vital to always have up-to-date information, especially in your clinical specialty, as this will help to ensure you provide reliable information.
Lack of continuing education in your specialty area could mean whatever you think is the correct information for your patient is obsolete or no longer applicable.
This could lead to low or reduced trust. Of course, you don’t want your patients to have low or reduced trust, as this will affect treatment adherence. So pursue CE credits, especially in your specialty, to ensure the information you provide is accurate and reliable.
Continuing education is the secret ingredient every nurse needs to provide evidence-based care. This is because, as per its definition, evidence-based care is the deliberate use of current best evidence (practice, information, and evidence) for patient treatment.
And the only way to ensure nurses have current or latest evidence is through continuing education. Therefore, if you want to ensure the level of care you provide is up to date and based on evidence, you must pursue nursing education actively and fully engaged.
Furthermore, remember your patients depend on you to save them from their elements. So continue learning to ensure you always have the latest knowledge that could help you save a life.
Nursing CE can help you to develop leadership skills or to improve them. So if you want to become a leader or to show leadership skills in your place of work, you best engage in nursing CE that will help you to develop leadership skills or enhance them.
Even nursing leadership seminars, webinars, and virtual classes can earn nursing CE credits.
Since these learning methods are usually more effective in developing leadership qualities, you should pursue them or mix them and actual leadership courses to enhance your leadership qualities.
Have you ever wished you knew something straight away that you ought to have known before doing research? If yes, you’ve learned that being a qualified and certified nurse does not mean you possess all the knowledge in your field.
You can and must always strive to know more and improve at what you do. CE is the best way to do this. It can help you become more knowledgeable about treatments, safety measures, and medications. It can also familiarize you with new safe, and quality care methods.
Finally, nursing CE can help you learn how to safeguard your mental health, which is important, especially in the modern day and age.
Nursing is amazing; however, if you are like most people, you probably don’t wish to live with your current biweekly or monthly paycheck until retirement.
You want it to go up regularly. One of the ways you can do this is to pursue nursing courses or programs that will open more opportunities for you.
For example, getting a master’s degree in nursing will open up many new opportunities. It will allow you to apply for junior or mid-level leadership roles in your current workplace or elsewhere.
It could also allow you to switch from doing nursing rounds to participating in groundbreaking research that enhances patient care or nurse safety. So for more career opportunities, never stop learning and getting more education (especially college education).
New nurses probably experience burnout and job dissatisfaction more than new employees in other professions. Majorly, this is because of the challenging nature of nursing work in most workplaces across the country.
The typical new nurse in the US has to stand on their feet for many hours throughout the day and move around quite a lot. This is also true for nurses in Canada, the UK, Australia, China, Japan, and elsewhere.
Furthermore, they also have to handle many mentally exhausting tasks like recording vitals, administering injections, etc. Doing all these things for weeks on end can cause burnout symptoms.
Luckily, CE credits can help you to rediscover your passing in nursing. It can help you to remind yourself why you chose to be a nurse in the first place. It can also help you to gain the education you need to move to a new nursing job or post that is less demanding.
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Being a nurse is tough already, and this is why many people despise being required to get nursing CE credits; they feel like it is extra work that they do not need. However, as this post shows, CE for nurses is very beneficial. It helps you become more knowledgeable and opens you up to many opportunities.
Notably, most nurses think that continuing education is difficult or complicated because they are already employed. This is true but not as complicated as most new nurses think.
Many nursing schools and colleges understand that nursing is typically very demanding. Therefore, they have developed programs allowing even nurses with little free time to continue their education.
Indeed, because of this, nurses can pursue a BSN or MSN while already working full-time jobs.
Therefore, do not despise or decide not to take CE seriously because you think it is too difficult. It might be challenging, yes, but it is something you can do. Most nurses who take on serious CE programs survive and get certificates or diplomas. Approach the situation with the right mentality, and you will be on your way to gaining more knowledge and opportunities through CE.
Nursing CE is very challenging when you already have full-time employment or are returning to school after a long time. However, it is state-required and/or employer-required in most workplaces across America.
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