Goals in a Nursing Career Overview
Nursing career goals are very important in the professional life of a nurse. This is because they usually outline the career path of a nurse.
For that reason, as a nurse you, in various scenarios you might be required to provide incisive examples of nursing career goals.
For instance, you could be obligated to provide short term goals for nursing interview, a nursing professional goals statement, or long term goals for nursing practitioner, when seeking employment or academic opportunities.
It is therefore important to understand what career goals entail.
Accordingly, career goals can be defined as:
“Well-defined statements that explain the profession a person seeks to pursue in their career.”
Career goals can also be termed as:
“Targets that an individual could use to guide their career.”
Without doubt, a good grasp of nursing career goals will come in handy when writing a nursing career goals essay.
Any serious student or practitioner should therefore have an elaborate nursing professional goals statement.
Note that when seeking enrollment into a nursing school, it is almost certain that you will be required to write a personal essay on nursing career goals.
This marks the beginning of writing nursing essays and it is very critical in the nursing school application process.
Writing such an essay demands a good understanding of the respective steps to essay writing.
During college application, the nursing career goals essay is just as important as an admission essay, curriculum vitae or resume, admission letter, and personal statement.
This requires you to possess the appropriate writing skills.
The writing process has to be meticulous, where it should effectively reflect the objective of the career goals essay.
Importantly, before you embark on writing the essay, you need to understand the different careers areas for nurses.
These careers can be categorized under three major groups that include:
1. Direct Patient Registered Nurse
This career path entails working at the patient’s bedside as part of an interdisciplinary team. The primary role of the nurse entails working “hands-on” with patients.
2. Indirect Patient Care Registered Nurse
This career path involves working with an interdisciplinary team with different healthcare professionals, including the bedside nurse to support patient care.
It focuses more on working in administrative and management capacities.
Work settings for this nurse may include:
1. Outpatient settings
2. Insurance companies
3. Hospitals
4. Correctional healthcare facilities
5. Government
6. Skilled nursing facilities
7. Clinics
8. Community health
9. Physician offices
10. Universities
3. Advanced Practice Registered Nursing
This is considered the epitome of a nursing career. The career path acts as a bridge between nurses and physicians. Such nurses perform high-level duties and oversee nursing stuff.
APRN areas of practice include:
1. Nurse anesthetist
2. Nurse practitioner
3. Clinical nurse specialist
4. Nurse midwife
Developing the Goals
Developing appropriate goals is one of the major areas of concern when writing an essay on nursing career goals.
Accordingly, there are a myriad factors you should consider to ensure that your goals are aligned with your academic and professional pursuits.
It is therefore important to ensure that essay is top notch.
Note that writing nursing objectives and goals demands a good understanding of the goal development process.
Generally, when developing such goals you should deliberate on a number of factors, including:
1. Reasons why you are attracted to nursing
A nurse is considered the first line contact in healthcare provision as well as saving of life.
For instance, the nurse is usually the first person to identify any patient who may require emergency attention.
Ordinarily, the nursing practice is demanding in its nature of work, requires high levels of concentration, and it can be mentally draining.
This is more severe in some areas of nursing practice than others.
With this in mind, developing a nursing professional goals statement requires a proper personal evaluation to help determine the reason that attracts you to the profession.
Identifying this reason will help you make appropriate decisions on the path to follow.
2. The kind of work setting that suits you
This is another vital question to ask yourself when writing an essay on nursing career goals.
It is important to appreciate the fact that respective nursing careers are practiced in different environments.
Note that some careers may require you to work mostly indoors, travel constantly and widely, practice in large hospitals, walk around in communities, hold conferences and educative workshops, or even work in teaching institutions.
It is therefore essential to consider the different work settings when writing nursing objectives and goals.
This is key in determining whether you have the requisite personal traits and attributes for working in the respective environments and nursing careers.
3. The kind of people you wish to interact with in your daily life
Close to the setting, the kind of people you wish to interact with on a daily basis is another important factor to consider when writing an essay on nursing career goals.
This looks at the patients, colleagues, and the people you report to. Markedly, some nursing careers accord you the opportunity to interact directly with the sick, community members, students, and intellectuals.
In some nursing careers, interaction with people either patients or the public is limited.
Also, levels of requirements to report to your superiors vary from one nursing career to another.
You should as such seek to understand where your personality suits most when developing your nursing professional goals statement.
4. The requisite academic qualifications
Importantly, you must consider the academic qualifications for each path when writing an essay on nursing career goals.
This is because some career paths are more demanding academically than others.
Obviously, some career paths will only require an undergraduate degree while others require a masters or a doctorate degree.
It is therefore important to determine whether you are interested in the pursuit of further studies and up to what level.
This requires you to consider factors like your age, financial capability or plans, and other life issues like desire for more time with family.
Aptly, the more the specialized the nursing career path is, the higher the academic demands.
Setting Nursing Career Goals
To come up with appropriate examples of nursing career goals, you will be required to possess the requisite goal setting knowledge and skills.
Note that the process of setting achievable nursing career goals demand that you adopt the SMART goals approach. The SMART goals are as explained below.
It is important to note that SMART is an acronym for:
S: Specific
M: Measurable
A: Attainable
R: Realistic
T: Time-bound
Specific. Certainly, it is important to ensure that the goals you include in you nursing professional goals statement are not extremely broad.
Instead, all examples of nursing career goals provided should be limited in scope to avoid vagueness or being open to individual interpretation.
You have to understand that long-term goals for nurse practitioner in particular are easily subjected to negative effects of change in practice environment and personal views.
For this reason, the nursing career goals should be specific enough to avoid incidences of extreme variation.
The goals should be as focused and detailed as possible.
Measurable. Good nursing career goals must be measurable. It has been observed that measurability is key when it comes to how to achieve nursing goals.
This is important in helping determine progress in your nursing career. Accordingly, such progress could be explored using different examples of nursing goals for yearly evaluation.
Measurability is also essential in helping demarcate achievements that in return act as a source of motivation.
Therefore, your nursing career goals should incorporate clear milestones that have a defined ending.
Attainable. This pertains to how to achieve nursing goals. Note that there is a major attainability challenge particularly when it comes to long-term goals for nurse practitioner.
This is because such nursing career goals could demand tools and resources beyond the reach of the nurse.
As such, it is important to ensure that your nursing goals are in cognizant of required resources, including time frames, skills, funds, etc.
This requires you to break down your goals into smaller ones especially in incidences where the main goal in quite complex.
As such, you could start by exploring the most appropriate examples of nursing goals for yearly evaluation.
Realistic. Concerning this aspect, you have to ensure that all the examples of nursing career goals you choose to adopt are realistic in regard to the context of nursing practice.
You should consider numerous factors to help decide whether your nursing career goals are realistic.
Such factors may include their scope, required skills, existing systems, personal capacity, etc.
In particular, long-term goals for nurse practitioner could pose serious challenges when it comes to being realistic.
The nurse should therefore seek to create career goals that are grounded and aligned to the context of nursing practice.
Time-bound. Timeliness is another of the important elements when it comes to how to achieve nursing goals. It entails attaching a specific timeline to your nursing career goals.
Each goals should have a timeline within which the goals is expected to have been achieved. This could require you to come up with different examples of nursing goals for yearly evaluation.
The timelines are supposed to work as indicators of progress and source of motivation for the nurse to act towards a certain direction.
Parts of an Essay on Nursing Career Goals
After understanding the factors that influence your nursing career goals, you should go ahead and list down the respective goals.
With them written down, you can now embark on the process of writing a top quality essay on nursing career goals.
Note that the whole writing process is usually quite elaborate and systematic.
Accordingly, the correct writing process should pay attention to different parts essential in making the essay coherent and meaningful.
These parts should focus on:
1. Developing the main theme
This is usually accomplished through the first paragraph. Developing the theme entails clearly highlighting the topic or ideas you intend to discuss in the essay on nursing career goals.
In this paragraph is where you should seek to capture the interest of the reader.
You should do this using a characteristic hook that distinguishes you from the rest, and makes the reader curious about you.
The hook should therefore be as unique and personal as possible.
Importantly, this paragraph should have a thesis statement. Loosely translated, the thesis statement should stipulate your position in the essay.
It should precise and clear, and appearing at the end of the paragraph.
2. Explaining the inspiration behind your nursing career goals
The part explaining the reason why or the source of your inspiration in the pursuit of a particular career path is quite essential in an essay on nursing career goals.
This requires you to connect your past experiences with the desire to become a nurse.
For instance, you could examine encounters with a sick person or a person who required care, experiences derived from relatives, or television and documentary programs.
This part should be illustrative in nature to adequately create an image of reality about your experiences.
Doing this requires you to tell a story about something or describe your experiences in an elaborate manner.
3. Discussing your short-term nursing career goals
In the third paragraph, you should discuss your short-term nursing career goals.
This is a very important part of an essay on nursing career goals as it explains your motivation and targets.
Usually, it should encompass your nursing career goals in 5 years.
Part of these goals entail the major you intend to pursue.
By itself, you should state your nursing major of choice and how it is going to help you realize the stipulated short-term goals.
You should clearly identify the specific skills you seek to acquire to help achieve these goals.
Finally, you should finish the paragraph by explaining how these goals build up to your long-term goals.
Per se, examples of nursing career goals in 5 years may include
1. Passing national board exams.
2. Developing interpersonal skills.
3. Working in a nursing department, e.g. pediatrics.
4. Discussing your long-term nursing career goals
The fourth paragraph should focus on highlighting your long-term goals.
You should clearly state the objectives that will guide you for the period beyond the first five years.
A good essay on nursing career goals should tie your long-term goals to the impact you plan to have on the society.
It is not necessary that you provide long tern nursing goals examples in your essay.
If you are not sure about such goals, just focus on the difference you want to make.
Note that long-term goals could change with time in practice.
As such, you could pay emphasis on passionate practice and the impact it could have on those around you.
That said, long term nursing goals examples include:
1. Becoming a specialist in a particular field like trauma.
2. Gaining an advanced degree.
3. Assuming a nursing management position.
5. Concluding the nursing career goals essay
This is usually the fifth and the last paragraph in an essay on nursing career goals.
It plays an important role in providing a concise summary of the key points in the essay.
This part requires you to explore ways to make you memorable. When writing nursing objectives and goals, you should ensure that you stand out.
For the conclusion part, you could to choose to end with a question on a key nursing issue.
Examples of Nursing Career Goals
Note that you are required to be break down your nursing career goals into small achievable targets.
This is in consideration of the fact that a nursing career could be very long with numerous phases and stages.
Therefore, the examples of nursing career goals you intend to provide should focus on the different categories of nursing goals.
Such categories include:
1. Short-term nursing career goals,
2. Mid-term nursing career goals, and
3. Long-term nursing career goals.
Short-Term Nursing Career Goals
These are the goals that focus on what the nurse intends to achieve before and immediately after graduating from the nursing college.
Examples may include:
1. Graduating from college with exemplary grades.
2. Securing nursing practice license within the first year after graduating from college.
3. Securing a nursing job at a reputable healthcare institution immediately after securing practice license.
4. Finding a mentor to guide you through your career.
The above are some of the common short term goals for nursing interview sessions. Note that they could be modified to suit your career path and plan.
Importantly, you should understand that these goals usually focus on the issues relevant to building a foundation for a long nursing career.
Mid-Term Nursing Career Goals
These are goals that come along after you have graduated from the nursing college and when you are in the real field of practicing.
The goals are guided by the general mission that usually is:
“Excelling in the current job position.”
This excellence is acquired through practice for a number of hours within the appropriate nursing environment.
Note that the excellence could only be proved using the right certificate.
Accordingly, examples of nursing career goals in this area may include:
1. Attaining critical care certification (for nurses whose job entails working in the ICU).
2. Gaining clinical mastery by acquiring relevant skills and experience.
3. Developing interpersonal skills necessary in nursing practice.
4. Enhancing technological skills in fields related to nursing.
Long-Term Nursing Career Goals
These are the goals that define your place in nursing after you have acquired clinical expertise and a broader view of nursing practice.
Such goals have to be geared towards adapting to the dynamic practice context as well as further enhancement of individual capacity and relevancy to the field.
That said examples of nursing career goals under this category may include:
1. Enrolling for a MSN by majoring in such areas as nursing management or leadership.
2. Becoming a nurse leader in an established healthcare institution.
3. Establishing a nurse informatics enterprise in the state.
4. Facilitating patient participation by providing relevant information through Tele-health programs in the state.
5. Starting nursing organizations that provide healthcare services in rural areas.
Note that the short-term, mid-term, and long-term nursing career goals could be changed depending on the specific area you seek to practice in.
