Within the nursing degree, there are many different specialties and fields to work in. Determining which is the best fit for you and your lifestyle can often be challenging. Luckily for nurses, switching your career path if it is not the best fit can be relatively easy. Many nurses do so multiple times throughout the length of their careers. The process for choosing which nursing path you want to take relies on three things: following your gut, your passion, and your mind.
Following your gut means evaluating your feelings and emotions. You will do a lot of clinical rotations during school that will be a good insight into what a career might look like within this field. Clinical rotations during your years in school are very helpful in determining what you enjoy and like the most. You should consider and evaluate how you feel when working in these environments, following your feelings and your gut. You may also feel influenced and persuaded by faculty and your educators. This can be hard to ignore, but in the end you truly only know yourself and what is the best fit for you.
Following your passion: how your personality aligns with the different nursing specialties. Evaluating this involves doing some research. Burnout and stress may be caused if your passion and personality do not fit and align with your chosen specialty. Try to focus on what you are passionate about outside of just nursing and the things that give you energy.
These previous steps all provide the layout for tapping into your mind and finding the never-ending challenge fitting for you. Growth in your profession is very important and comes from two things: learning and facing challenges. You need to determine what specialty makes you excited and also challenges you. This prevents boredom in the long run of your career.
With that said, it is advised to conduct searches on nurses taking on these fields and specialties. This provides you with insight on what working in these fields is actually like. Use these interviews and real life scenarios to make your final decision.
And as always, you aren’t stuck in one place forever if you don’t want to be.