Nursing leadership can take several forms. There are corporate roles that are focused on the strategic implementation of systems and technologies to optimize operations and improve patient outcomes.
These jobs are administrative in nature and will take the nurse far outside their typical role of bedside care. There are also on-floor leadership positions, most commonly the charge nurse, who is focused on both staffing management and patient care.
In either case, the nursing leader is going to occupy a space that is highly focused on technological developments.
In this article, we take a look at what it means to be a nurse in an increasingly digital world and how an ambitious professional might leverage technological understanding to seek leadership positions.
Do You Need a Special Degree to Become a Nursing Leader?
That’s a good question, also one that lacks a singular answer. It is safe to say that a graduate degree is a fast-tracked way of achieving a leadership role.
You can find graduate programs that specifically focus on nursing management. In these cases, you may still learn about patient care strategies, but your education will also have business-like aspects that are not emphasized in BSN programs.
You might learn about management strategies, communication methods, technological adoption trajectories, and so on. In these cases, your education might have more in common with a business student than a nursing student.
In fact, professionals with degrees in nursing management can take their career ambitions all the way to the C-suite. There are nursing leadership positions with chief executive in the title.
These career paths are incredibly competitive but financially and personally rewarding. So, yes, if you want to be a nursing executive with a $200,000 a year or more salary, you’re going to need a graduate degree and possibly even a doctorate in nursing.
The “promote from within” leadership position of charge nurse does not always require a graduate degree. In these cases, hierarchies are often based on seniority and ability.
If you are hoping to become a charge nurse or occupy a comparable position within your healthcare system, you may find it helpful to state your intentions clearly to your employers. They may have promotion track programs in place that will help you take the steps required to get where you want to be.
No matter what your career ambition is, you’ll need a keen understanding of digital technology as it relates to health care.
What Tech Skills Are Prioritized in Healthcare Environment?
At minimum, nurses are expected to have a reasonable understanding of data management and implementation. They don’t need to be data scientists, but they do need to be able to easily comprehend the many data points that are constantly being updated in a modern healthcare environment.
Patient monitoring technology has improved and become incredibly digital in recent years, to the point where nurses can remotely monitor an entire floor of patients from a centralized triage hub. This both improves efficiency and increases response speed in situations where emergencies do develop.
The good news, of course, is that because digital patient monitoring is a standard aspect of the work, the skills required to do it successfully are taught in any standard BSN program. This, in fact, will be consistent for any modern technology.
If you are a nurse with years under your belt, maybe one who got their bachelor’s degree many moons before AI or even digital health care records found their way into the hospital system, you’ll of course know that continuing education initiatives will cover the skills that you did not learn in college.
This is all to say that anyone working as a nurse today will have consistent opportunities and, in fact, requirements to learn any digital skill that the job asks of them.
You don’t necessarily need to go out of your way to learn more digitally native skills.
Putting Yourself on the Management Trajectory
None of this is to say that it isn’t a good idea to consider the importance of digital technology when you are planning out ongoing education or even graduate study courses of action.
If you are actively looking for a leadership or management role as a nurse, understanding data, AI, and other forms of remote patient monitoring technology is certainly going to be placed at a high value.
However, you should also think actively about the specific job that you want and what educational requirements are typically needed to get it. Again, this is a consideration for which speaking with higher-ups at your hospital could be advantageous.
However, and this is a factor consistent with any profession, it may also benefit you to accept the idea that you might need to apply to new hospitals. Job stagnation can happen very easily when you get locked in with a single employer.
You might be more than qualified for a nursing leadership position, but if there are only a few such jobs to go around and they’re already occupied by people who might stay with the hospital for 10, 15 years, you’ll never get the opportunity that you were looking for. On the other hand, if you’re willing to migrate, you might find a position available to you within a few months of looking.
Advanced Practice Work
Advanced practice nursing jobs are vertical moves, but not exactly a “promotion” in the traditional sense. The same way that to become a principal is not within the natural career trajectory of a teacher, becoming a nurse practitioner is not a natural possibility for RNs.
Advanced practice positions are neither promotions nor, strictly speaking, leadership roles. Rather, they are unique jobs that are possible only through graduate studies.
If you are interested in increasing your range of responsibilities (and boosting your pay in the process), they can be an excellent option. However, advanced practice nursing education is not necessarily the natural destination for nurses who want a leadership position.
Conclusion
The qualities that make a person a great nurse don’t always make them an excellent job candidate. You got into this line of work because you are compassionate and you want to make a genuine difference in the world.
While hospitals are certainly happy to find these qualities in future nursing leaders, they also gravitate naturally towards nurses who display at least a degree of ambition. If you want a leadership position, you need to be actively seeking it.
State your intentions. Look for qualifications that will help you get there sooner. And if opportunities are not available at the hospital you’re currently working at, go out in the world and find them somewhere else.
Nursing leadership jobs will occasionally fall into a person’s lap, but if you’re serious about advancing your health care career, go out and find opportunities. That’s the fastest and most effective way to become a nursing leader.
EDTECH 4 BEGINNERS 