Nursing is concerned with providing care to a person, their family and community in the effort that all might reach, maintain and get back maximum health as well as quality of life, from natural conception to natural death. Nursing occupations demand that nurses mainly work within a large selection of specialties. Within these specialties, nurse jobs demand that professionals work on an independent basis or as a part of a team for the purpose of assessing, evaluating, planning and then implementing patient care.

The science of nursing is made up of a field of knowledge that is founded on the contributions of research and peer-reviewed, scholarly journals. Because of the many specialties that nurses can pick, there is a good amount of career mobility in this profession.

Career Mobility

Nursing programs stress the quality of career mobility in a nursing career. This quality is rooted in the fact that the nursing profession presents a lot of room for professional and personal growth, education and career development. During the course of an average nursing career, a nurse will encounter opportunities for mobility that include varying levels of education, leadership and management opportunities, and a wide range of nursing specialties. These factors give rise to the near-constant chance to try out new things in a nursing career. An effective nursing education will be the linchpin that makes such opportunities for career mobility possible.

Online Nursing Programs

Online nursing programs sometimes stress that the shortage in certain specialties of nursing as well as with regards to nurses holding higher degrees actually leads to opportunities in career mobility. All this means that there are an increasing number of employment chances for nurses, chances that increasingly relate to the real distinctions in a nurse’s educational levels. However, reaching new heights in the nursing profession by way of, for example, enrolling in online LPN programs have been traditionally impeded by the demands of home life constraints. A few examples of these home life constraints are the pressures of child rearing and finding a balance between work and family. As a result, some diploma or Associate’s Degree holding nurses who want to move further with their education get discouraged by all the new challenges that career mobility presents them with.

It is for the aforementioned dilemmas of balancing work with family life that web-based instructions such as online RN programs were devised. Online instruction provides an exciting chance for nurses who are looking to advance in their careers. This new feature in the nursing field creates a new paradigm whereby the interactivity and the resources of the Internet are harnessed to furnish learning opportunities for nurses who already have a family. A nursing program that is accessible online, in contrast with traditional programs like an LPN program at a physical university, lets nurses who want to move ahead in their career take courses from the comfort of their own home. This benefit lets them still attend to career mobility, all the while making sure that their family life is not neglected by the strenuous demands of more course work.

Room to Move Up the Ladder

There are also a myriad of ways of moving up in the nursing profession. For example, LPNs (licensed practical nurse) who are looking to advance in their career can take an RN program in any number of ways. They may break down their coursework so that they can earn either an Associate’s Degree or even a Master’s Degree in just four semesters, which they can complete back to back or over a course of years. After an LPN has completed the required coursework to obtain either an Associate’s Degree or a Master’s Degree in Nursing, they are then able to set their sights on the next career level, which is the RN (registered nurse). An LPN who has received an Associate’s Degree or a Master’s Degree in Nursing is then eligible to take the National Council Licensure Examination for Registered Nurses, or the NCLEX-RN. Even paramedics who are looking to change careers can take several semesters worth of nursing courses to get their degree in nursing.

Registered Nurse

As a registered nurse, a person has to realize that their accountability and their skill set is a lot more demanding than when they was merely a licensed practical nurse. Accordingly, the employment opportunities for registered nurses are a whole lot greater, too, and this has in part to do with the fact that registered nurses are able to work in a broader array of working environments. For instance, a registered nurse is able to work in places like doctor’s offices, hospitals, community health agencies, and even in outpatient clinics. Furthermore, the step up to registered nurse does not mean that the career mobility of a nurse ends then and there. After becoming a registered nurse, a nurse has an even bigger set of career choice possibilities waiting for them, if they so desire to pursue them. For example, a registered nurse can go on to become a clinician, a nurse midwife, a nurse practitioner, a nurse educator, a nurse administrator, a nurse consultant or even a nurse researcher.

Nursing schools stress the career mobility that being a practicing nurse entails. Due to the many types of nursing specialties available in the nursing profession, there are many types and levels of nurses and also a series of levels to climb in the career ladder. Even though the nursing field presents practicing nurses with a host of opportunities for career mobility throughout their careers, it cannot be emphasized enough that sometimes these opportunities are compromised or even lost because of the dilemma of balancing a personal life with the professional life and career opportunities of a nurse. For this reason, an increasing number of online programs for various nursing degrees have sprung up, and it is these programs’ intent to help nurses manage the demands of a home life with their aspirations of advancing in their nursing career. From online programs or programs at nursing schools, nurses can take additional courses and get higher degrees until they reach registered nurse status, which leads to even more career possibilities.

To find out more about nursing career mobility, see these links.

• Career Mobility for Nurses
• Scholarships for Career Mobility
• Career Mobility Program Information
• Mobility in Nursing
• Career Mobility to reach RN Status
• What is Career Mobility for Nursing?
• Vocational Nurse to Registered Nurse
• Career Mobility Assessment
• Nursing Education & Mobility
• Mobility Protocol