3 Ways to Give Your Nursing Career an Energy Boost

Is your nursing job starting to feel ho-hum? Are you feeling stuck in a rut, with no interesting career options and little chance of a new challenge? Gone are the days when you passionately discussed the subtleties of a case with a co-worker, stayed up for hours researching current health care issues, and cheerfully volunteered for overtime. You might be a little embarrassed to admit it, even to yourself, but nursing practice just doesn’t inspire you anymore.

Don’t beat yourself up over your feelings. Nursing, like any career track, carries its own set of challenges and rewards, which eventually lose their appeal with years of experience and consistent mastery. The good news is that you don’t need to give in to boredom or nursing burnout. While it may be normal for the energy to seep out of your professional life, it doesn’t have to stay that way.

Check out these three creative ways you can give your nursing career a fresh boost of energy. You can head back to school and pursue further education, you can apply for certification within your nursing specialty, or expand your career horizons through an online nursing certificate program, or you can take a sabbatical!

1. Pursue Further Education

You might be feeling bored because your current job doesn’t offer any prospects for promotion, or perhaps you’re missing out on daily intellectual stimulation. Taking the next step in your educational life can open up exciting career prospects, connect you to a diverse student body, and get your brain moving in unexpected directions.

If you are an LPN, look into the online LPN to RN program. If you’re an RN, look into RN to BSN or RN to MSN bridge programs. And if you already have your master’s degree, enroll in a Nurse Practitioner program, take aim at a Doctor of Nursing Practice degree, or branch out with a degree in Healthcare Administration. Many nurses who choose to return to school are pleasantly surprised by the sub-specialties that have developed since they graduated. “I’m getting a second degree in nursing informatics,” comments one returning student on a nursing blog. “When I originally became a nurse there was no such thing as nursing informatics, so this is pretty exciting for me.”

2. Apply for Certification

Without certification in your chosen specialty, you’re missing out on peer recognition and higher pay. Even if you’re not looking for any immediate concrete pay-offs from certification, becoming certified can be a rewarding intellectual and personal journey. Georgia, a nephrology nurse from Ontario, reports that having to study for the national examination “put a fire under me and got me going again. Caring for my patients became a daily challenge again as I struggled to put more advanced concepts into practice.”

Georgia adds that although she thought she was already practicing at the peak of her potential, her certification helped her see her own weak spots, correct her inconsistencies and give her the confidence to apply for a more challenging role within her department.

After spending six years as a med-surg nurse, Ann K. wanted an opportunity for a change of pace as well as the ability to go into business for herself down the road. After looking into various Nursing Specialty Certificate programs, she decided to enroll in the new accelerated online Legal Nurse Consulting certificate program which allowed her to complete the program in just four months.

Ann's nursing education and clinical experience combined with the legal knowledge and research ability gained through the Legal Nurse Consulting Certificate program provided her with the knowledge and skills she needed to provide her highly valued expertise to attorneys and other legal and health care professionals on a myriad of issues including malpractice lawsuits, medical insurance claims, and workers' compensation cases while earning a handy $200 or more an hour.

3. Take a Sabbatical

“When I was the chief nursing executive at Montefiore Medical Center in New York, we created a nursing sabbatical program,” says Connie R. Curran, EdD, RN, FAAN, in her editorial piece “Boomers: bottlenecked, bored, and burned out,” which was published in Nursing Economics in March 2006. The Montefiore program was intended to help retain experienced staff nurses who were becoming frustrated with their work, Curran explains. “The application required the employee to develop a plan/purpose for the sabbatical. The plan had to be directed at improving the individual's practice, improving nursing practice at Montefiore, or improving the nursing profession.”

Curran reports that the sabbatical rejuvenated the nurses, giving them a revived passion for their practice, which also improved the overall quality of the medical center. Find out if your organization offers a sabbatical program. If they don’t, work with your peers and supervisors to create a program that will allow you to take time out of the daily grind to rekindle your passion for nursing.

Now that you have some ideas for boosting the energy level of your nursing career, decide which one best fits your situation. Will you pursue further education, apply for certification, or take a sabbatical? The choice is up to you.

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