Navigating the Decision- Choosing a Nursing Specialty for Professional and Academic Success
Navigating the Decision- Choosing a Nursing Specialty for Professional and Academic Success
The MSN program incorporates various fields of specialization in the nursing career. The specialization is focused on pursuing further education to directly or indirectly practice in care delivery (Hicks & Patterson 2017). The specialization helps nurses positively influence the quality of care delivery by utilizing knowledge acquired to lead other nurses, promote innovations, and implement them into practice. Each of the specializations requires some specific form of qualification through undergoing a specific curriculum and course work designed to teach the professionals the required personal and professional skill sets and knowledge.
My choice of nursing specialty among the several offered in the MSN program is Nurse executive. Nurse executives are responsible for leading nursing teams, managing the care delivery systems, and making administrative decisions within facilities to influence the achievement of objectives and goals (Aldridge, 2021). They mentor practitioners through their senior administrative positions to facilitate enhanced care delivery to patients. Making such a decision requires an extensive evaluation of both personal traits and skills that have already been acquired through the nursing program and practice. Both a master’s and bachelor’s degrees are necessary for the position.
The accreditation necessary to become a nurse executive involves the nursing education program, obtaining an RN license, extra education, and experience, and then applying for certification to practice as a nurse executive. The choice of the nurse executive specialty is based on my previous experiences of dealing with people and managing teams in practice. As a leader, I possess good communication skills and motivate teams to achieve goals effectively with cooperation. I can also work with and within a culturally diversified environment. Some challenges faced when deciding to pursue the specialty include anxiety and fear of the extra curriculum needed for qualification. Being in a master’s program initially felt like loads of work and complex knowledge to acquire. At first, managing teams and other staff felt overwhelmed by the pressure to deal with their problems.
References
Hicks, R. W., & Patterson, R. (2017). Navigating nursing education. AORN Journal, 106(6), 523-533.
Aldridge, M. (2021). Leadership and Management in Professional Nursing Practice.