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Nursing is an excellent career, but unless you push yourself to further your formal qualifications, you can find yourself stuck in a rut. It’s a lot of work to become an RN, but that is just the start. There are so many places to go from there, places that allow you to gain greater control over what you do, where you work, and the hours you put in. High-level nurses are in huge demand, as well, and in many states today can even replace many of the duties typically handled by physicians.
There are, however, barriers. Nursing is unlike most other careers because you cannot just put in the effort and the hours to progress. You need to pursue higher levels of education and then pass a state exam. Without this, it doesn’t matter how talented you are or how much you know, because, by law, you cannot be promoted to an APRN.
If you are already an RN, then you know the drill by now, but if you have only just started your career as a nurse, or are looking at becoming a nurse in the future, then follow this guide so that you can complete your degree while working a full-time:
Contents
The General Guideline of Your Nursing Career
If you are just starting out as a nurse, you need to be upfront with yourself about the effort and hard work necessary before you reach the upper echelons. Getting started as a nursing assistant is relatively easy and only takes a few months, but the further up you go, the longer it will take.
Certified Nursing Assistant
What Do You Do?
Certified nursing assistants provide a lot of palliative support and emotional care for patients. They work directly under an RN and help with a variety of tasks. This could help patients with walking, exercising, or moving them to help reduce strain and issues in bed. They feed, bathe, dress, and assist patients in many ways; they are among the most familiar faces a patient will see.
How Long Does It Take?
The course to become a CNA is only a few weeks, making it a very simple way to break into nursing. Therefore, it is recommended that, if you can, to take this course in-person and on a full-time basis. You will be able to quickly transition to your new career and then work your way up from there.
How Much Do They Get Paid?
Certified Nursing Assistants, on average, are paid around $30,720 per year, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
Licensed Nursing Practitioner
What Do You Do?
Your role is significantly expanded when you become an LNP. Rather than dealing mainly with holistic care, you will start to work within the frame of medicine. You may take vitals, collect samples, administrate medication, and more.
How Long Does It Take?
You will need to earn a certificate to become an LNP, and it usually takes around six months to complete.
How Much Do They Get Paid?
Licensed Nursing Practitioners make, on average, around $48,500 per year, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. The highest-paid LNP nurses make around $60,000 per year.
Registered Nurse
What Do You Do?
Registered nurses are what the public thinks of when they hear the word “nurse”. They make up the bulk of healthcare and are arguably the most important component of the nation’s health. They work as direct caretakers, and they manage patient’s daily activities, make assessments, help alongside physicians, and more. They are there for patients both directly and in an overseeing position.
How Long Does It Take?
A BSN, like many bachelor’s, takes four years to complete. The other option to become an RN is to earn an associate degree in nursing, which can take less time (two years) but can also take the same amount of time (four years) as a BSN. If you can, always try to go directly for your BSN, as you will need to go back, later on, to earn that degree if you want to progress any further.
Online nursing programs can be difficult to choose between, and if you struggled in the past to juggle your education and your career, it might seem like the wiser choice to take the shorter route, but in this case, it does not pay off. It can make it harder to secure a job where you want to work and reduce the amount of income you earn.
How Much Do They Get Paid?
Registered Nurses earn around $71,730 per year, with the highest-paid earning around $90,760 per year, though it is important to note that BSN RNs tend to earn more than those who went through the associate’s degree route. This is also highlighted in how states are beginning to stress BSN degrees by increasing the number of BSN-holding RNs in their state.
Advanced Practice Registered Nurse
What Do You Do?
What you do as an APRN depends entirely on what specialization you worked towards. Online nursing programs for masters are so much more than just as MSN, and they also help you qualify for a specific position. Some of the most common positions that nurses work towards are either as a Family Nurse Practitioner, which will allow you to broaden your practice and work autonomously with patients from infancy and older.
Adult-Gerontology is another popular choice, which would position you perfectly to work in a more advanced role with adolescents, adults, and the elderly.
Of course, there are also specializations like anesthetist or midwifery, which would have you specialize in different areas of medicine and completely change what your average workday looks like.
At this stage, you will want to know what you want to go towards because the best and most direct way to further your career through online nursing programs is to know what specialization you want to focus on.
How Long Does It Take?
An MSN typically takes two years, though if you need to space this out better to accommodate your hectic work schedule and your degree, always feel free to take longer.
How Much Do They Get Paid?
The average APRN salary is typically over six figures, with the average being around $109,992 per year. That being said, the specialization that you get involved in changes this average significantly. The highest-paid APRN position that of a Nurse Anesthetist earns around $164,030 per year.
The salaries of more common specializations, like Family Nurse Practitioners, also varies considerably. FNPs in some states are allowed to open and operate their own family health clinics, putting their salaries far higher than a standard salaried FNP.
How to Successfully Complete an Online Nursing Degree
Working your way up through the ranks is a great way to get yourself accustomed to nursing, healthcare, and, most importantly, what you enjoy most out of it. If the big-city hospital is not your pace, then there are many alternatives you can look into where your skills would be essential. Never feel that just because a hospital isn’t the right setting for you, that you are somehow letting people down. Cities and big hospitals have a lot of staff. It is small rural areas where you may better find your speed that are lacking.
For now, however, it’s important to focus on completing your online nursing programs. Online nursing programs are not made equally, nor are they interchangeable. You need to find the right online nursing programs for your goals and for your personal skills. Some benefit from a more hands-off approach, and others benefit from gentle guidance the entire way. With these tips, you will be able to work towards your next degree with your health, your wellbeing, and your career thriving all the way through:
Choose the Right Degree
The first step is to choose online nursing programs that are perfectly fitted to your goals and how you learn. This cannot be a degree that was just recently translated from an in-person learning environment to an online environment. There are many degrees (and not just in nursing) that have done this with mixed results. Some aspects are easy, and others severely detract from the quality of education you receive.
Thankfully most online nursing programs were designed to be completed online, which means they take full advantage of all the tools and potential the digital landscape offers.
To make sure that the online nursing programs that you are looking at do, indeed, offer the tools and features they’ll need to help and keep you supported throughout your education, check that they:
- Are accredited and will enable you to take the state license exam
- Have no mandatory log-in times
- Are designed to be completed around shift work
- Provide clinical placement support and guidance
- Allow you to take just one course at a time
- Give you a break between courses (typically in a 7-1-7-week schedule)
- Have a thriving and helpful alumni community
- Have a high exam pass rate
Great online nursing programs know that they need to do more than just educate you. Every worthwhile university needs to do more than just present facts and figures. They need to guide, support and nurture. Only when they can do that successfully from a digital standpoint can an online degree call itself a degree.
How to Eat Well When You Are So Busy
Of course, there are limits to the amount of support you can receive from your university. They cannot help you eat better, just as they cannot stop bad things from happening at work. Nursing has a very high rate of compassion fatigue and emotional burnout, and that issue is being compounded due to physical burnout thanks to the coronavirus. You can still successfully learn while working, yes, but now more than ever, you need to safeguard your health while you do it.
That’s why to improve it, and you should start planning and prepping your meals. For snacks, switch from unhealthy items to fruits, veggies, and nuts. You can save a lot by doing this as well by simply buying in bulk or mixing your own trail mix.
To offload the effort of preparing everything yourself, bring in friends or family to help you prep your meals. They can prep their own for the week as well, so you have the opportunity to do something for your health and socialize.
How to Sleep Better (Even with Shift Work)
Shift work is notoriously hard on the sleep cycles, and though nothing will compare to a consistent routine when it comes to your sleep, you can use a few tricks. For one, change the light settings. Your electronics and lights in your home should be a warm light so that they don’t trick your brain into waking up. You should also invest in thick, blackout curtains. Better (namely, more breathable) sheets and a pillow that properly supports your neck can all be very helpful as well.
Where you can trick your brain, however, is with a routine. Ideally, this routine will involve sleeping and waking up simultaneously, but in the case of shift work doing the same activities before bed can do wonders.
Building the Right Learning Community
You are not and are never alone, not as a nurse and definitely not as a student. You can either set up online study groups with the others working on completing online nursing programs alongside you, or you can find friends who don’t mind working on a personal project or don’t mind just reading next to you while you study. Having that social and emotional support is critical. Ideally, this support will come from other nursing students; however, you can then workshop concepts and ideas while studying.
Slow and Steady Has Never Been More Important
Whatever you do, take it slow and take it steady. If you feel like you are burning out, take a step back where you can. This can be in your personal life, or it could be by discussing things with your student support coach. Everyone knows of the essential, hard work nurses are putting in during this pandemic, and there is support for you. All you need to do is ask.
