Career Progression for Nurses : 6 Tips to Support Your Nursing Career

Summary

In Carol Forde-Johnston's talk, she shares six essential tips for career progression in nursing. She emphasizes the importance of not letting failure define your career journey, highlighting her own experiences of overcoming early challenges. Her tips include knowing your career pathways, accessing support, aligning professional and academic development, planning ahead, preparing for interviews, and being patient with your career progression. Carol's engaging and candid insights provide invaluable guidance and hope for those in the nursing profession.

Highlights

• Carol shares her story of facing early career failure and bullying, yet she persevered 🎓
• The importance of mentorship and support in nursing is emphasized 👩‍🏫
• Understanding and exploring career pathways in various nursing sectors ✨
• The need for proper support, supervision, and career advice 🔍
• Aligning academic development with professional growth can lead to success 📈
• Preparation and patience are key for moving up the career ladder 🧗‍♀️

Key Takeaways

• Failure isn't the end! Embrace it and learn from it 🌟
• Explore various career pathways in nursing—there are lots of opportunities! 💼
• Find supportive mentors who believe in you and your potential 👩‍⚕️👨‍⚕️
• Shadows and informal visits can open your eyes to real job roles 👀
• Always align your professional experiences with your academic goals 📚
• Be patient and don't rush—career growth is a marathon, not a sprint 🏁

Overview

Carol Forde-Johnston starts her insightful talk by sharing her personal journey, emphasizing that initial failures do not dictate your future career. She recounts her early challenges, including failing her finals and experiencing bullying, and how supportive mentors and supervisors helped her stay in the field she loves. Her candid storytelling sets the stage for six insightful tips for career advancement.

The heart of her advice lies in knowing the myriad of career pathways available today in nursing, a stark contrast to the past. Carol emphasizes the power of mentorship, advising nurses to seek guidance from experienced professionals and to engage in shadowing to truly understand job roles. She highlights the importance of aligning professional experiences with academic endeavors, urging nurses to plan their educational and career moves a year in advance.

Throughout her talk, Carol stresses the essence of preparation and patience. She encourages nurses to rigorously prepare for interviews and to not rush their career progression, reminding them that it's about finding the right fit rather than a quick climb up the ladder. Her message concludes with a heartfelt reminder that personal well-being should always come first, providing a holistic view of career growth.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 02:00: Introduction and Personal Story The chapter begins with a welcome message to the audience for a talk that aims to provide six tips to support career progression in nursing. The speaker introduces themselves with a personal story, emphasizing that failure does not define one's future career. This point is underscored by a reference to a personal photograph from the 1980s, highlighting the speaker's experience and transformation over the years.
• 02:00 - 05:00: Importance of Support and Mentorship This chapter discusses the challenges faced due to lack of support and negative mentorship experiences. The speaker recalls their experience during vocational training in nursing, where they were bullied by their first mentor. This experience was profoundly negative and almost led them to abandon their career in nursing. The environment at the time was very hierarchical, and nurses were not yet degree-trained professionals, which contributed to the difficulties faced, especially for young and timid individuals entering the field.
• 05:00 - 11:00: Career Pathways Exploration The chapter discusses the significance of support and mentorship in career pathways, highlighting a personal experience where the lack of support nearly led to leaving a role, contrasted by a positive second placement that reinforced the importance of good mentorship.
• 11:00 - 14:00: Accessing Support and Career Advice The chapter titled 'Accessing Support and Career Advice' discusses the experience of a student who fails their nursing finals, unlike their peers. In the 1980s, job opportunities for newly registered nurses were more limited compared to modern times. The student had to relocate from Coventry after completing their nurse training in their hometown. The chapter likely explores themes of career challenges, support systems, and navigating professional setbacks.
• 14:00 - 23:00: Aligning Professional and Academic Development The chapter discusses the speaker's initial apprehensions about starting a new role in neurosciences. Despite initial fears, the speaker found a supportive charge nurse who played a pivotal role in fostering their passion for the field. This experience highlighted the importance of mentoring and providing guidance to newcomers.
• 23:00 - 31:00: Thinking Ahead and Preparing for Interviews The author reflects on the influence of good supervisors and mentors in their career journey. Initially uncertain about pursuing a clinical management pathway, they shifted towards education. This decision was reinforced by the support and guidance of supervisors, leading them to become an educator themselves.
• 31:00 - 36:00: Be Patient and Career is Not a Race The chapter emphasizes the importance of patience and understanding that a career is not a race. It discusses the speaker's personal experience with challenges in their career and advises individuals who may not be certain about their career path, particularly in nursing, to seek support before deciding to quit. The speaker reflects on their love for nursing and expresses gratitude for staying in the profession despite early difficulties, offering encouragement to those who may be struggling.

Career Progression for Nurses : 6 Tips to Support Your Nursing Career Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 [Music] hi everybody welcome to my talk today six tips to support your career progression in nursing and i hope you find them helpful first thing to say is failure will not define your future career and i'm a prime example of that the picture of me there in the 1980s with my hat on i'm a lot grayer now
• 00:30 - 01:00 we had a vocational training linked to schools of nursing and i was bullied by my first mentor and it was devastating and i very nearly left nursing and i remember her shouting at me on the ward areas and at the time it was very hierarchical that nursing was not a degree profession then and we were very much a pair of hands and i was a very timid quiet 18 year old and
• 01:00 - 01:30 at the end i went and spoke to people i gained there's much less support available then than there is nowadays but i stayed i went to my second placement and the mentor could not have been nicer and i'll always remember her and it just shows really how important it is for the support and supervision of students and how it can influence you to stay or to leave or roll for example or
• 01:30 - 02:00 as a student on a course and then at the end of my training i got to the end and i failed my nursing finals which was devastating and i was the only person in my cohort that failed and in the 1980s there was much less the demographic was very different job-wise we didn't have all these thousands of jobs that we have nowadays for newly registered nurses i had to move from coventry i did my nurse training in the place where i grew up and
• 02:00 - 02:30 i was really scared about moving secured a role but the area i went into i hadn't got a clue whether i'd enjoy neurosciences was my first role but an again amazing supportive charge nurse again i won't ever forget him was gave me a passion for that area and would it gave me so many tips in relation to how i should treat somebody that's a new starter so all the mentoring and
• 02:30 - 03:00 supervision i've had over the years from really good supervisors i've taken to learn from them to try and do the same to support people and from then it took me a long time to decide whether i wanted to go up a clinical management pathway and i went into education in the end and it was um only again through good supervision and through mentorship when i was registered that i came to decide that i wanted to become an educator and i've had amazing
• 03:00 - 03:30 mentors throughout my career but for those of you that might have failed an assignment or are not quite sure whether nursing is for you try and access support before you make that decision to leave if i had i would never have had the career that i've had and i absolutely love nursing and our profession and i couldn't have wished for a better career so hopefully that'll give hope to some people out there if you are struggling
• 03:30 - 04:00 six key tips that will help your career development from my own career 33 years as a registered nurse and 28 as a nurse tutor what's really helpful is to know what career pathways and opportunities are available to you and there are many more opportunities available nowadays to when i started my career know how to access support supervision and career advice which i'll give you some tips for aligning your professional experience
• 04:00 - 04:30 and development to academic development and courses always thinking a year ahead when you're looking at aligning your academic development and applying for courses rigorously preparing for interviews as you progress up career ladder or even if you're looking at sidewood's moves for certain roles there'll be high competition and being patient and not putting pressure on yourself is really important
• 04:30 - 05:00 so the first area know what career pathways and opportunities are available we have never been in a time in nursing where we have so many research opportunities internship opportunities different types of roles different settings than we have nowadays to do your research go and have a look on employer websites intranet sites nhs
• 05:00 - 05:30 jobs there's other national websites to look for jobs and look out for scholarships research internships network with experienced staff locally and nationally shadow others as well to see what opportunities are out there and interestingly you may think a role would suit your skill set and it it's interesting when people come to me and say i want to become a charge nurse or a team leader for example or i want to become a clinical educator or an
• 05:30 - 06:00 advanced nurse practitioner or a researcher the first thing i will say is go and talk to people in those roles go and book informal visits do some shadowing and interestingly there'll be a percentage that will come back and say actually i did not realize that is what that role entails and also across employers there will be different slightly different job descriptions and personal specifications so a role a clinical um a nurse educator
• 06:00 - 06:30 role practice development nurse in one trust might be slightly different in another we don't have standardization nationally currently so it's important to go and book informal visits and go and do that shadowing another key thing to think about looking at opportunities you can't apply for a role or an opportunity if you do not meet the essential in a job description or personal specification so you've got these essential criteria versus desirable so the essential might be certain qualifications that you have
• 06:30 - 07:00 to have desirable it you can acquire those qualifications in the role or experiences in the role so do you need a masters or a post registration specialist course to apply for this opportunity so that's important to look at that in advance looking at career pathways every person is different career pathways change according to personal circumstance and no pathway suits everybody when i
• 07:00 - 07:30 started out you could see i had a really difficult start didn't quite know what i wanted to do but with good support i developed a passion for an area and but i've had times in my career where i met a well for example i met a lecturer practitioner when we moved to a degree profession and i thought well i really want to become a lecturer practitioner and these were roles set up that were a bridge between the theoretical aspects of
• 07:30 - 08:00 nursing you'd go and teach for half of your role in a university and then your other half you would be in practice and i eventually became a lecturer practitioner in my specialist area of neurosciences which was my ideal role and but to become that lecturer practitioner i was at the time i was a sister nursing sister at the time i spoke to a lecturer practitioner and i knew that i had to gain certain qualifications and do a master's to
• 08:00 - 08:30 become a lecturer practitioner so i had to think about how am i going to do those courses and start aligning my career and it was quite slowly progressing but i got there and i was a bit of a plodder i would say with my education but i did it and i started to gain a real um interest in critiquing articles and writing and again that developed later in my career but when i was in the middle of my master's i had to go through a
• 08:30 - 09:00 bereavement and i had to leave for a year to have time out for a year so it's just being aware that your personal circumstances will affect where you're going with your career and there'll be times where you might know exactly where you're going and other times where you haven't got a clue and that's fine that's natural that's that happens others will be very ambitious and i became very ambitious when i knew i had that role that i was aspiring to and i tried to do everything i could possibly to align my professional experience and
• 09:00 - 09:30 academic courses once i knew that was where i was going and remember if you fail a module or a course you're not offered a role you can apply again or you can resit and look at alternatives learn from your interviews and you have not failed in your career looking at example career pathways you can go on nhs careers you can go on our royal college of nursing websites and you'll see different career pathways there's some fantastic videos out there
• 09:30 - 10:00 of people in all different types of roles under these sort of headings and these pathways um clinical your standard clinical leadership pathway so i started with that really as a staff nurse team leader um nursing sister i didn't want to become a matron and i moved over to an educational pathway and again i started bedside teaching and then aspired to the lecturer practitioner role and or i could have gone full-time into
• 10:00 - 10:30 university education there are so many different remits linked to education now and different roles and different employers offer different types of educational roles you've got your specialist nurse role or advanced nurse practitioner roles and then research there's so many research internships scholarships um national institute for health research you can go on the websites and look at what's available the royal college of nursing has
• 10:30 - 11:00 fantastic links and and sort of summarizes all of those opportunities nationally as well that you can apply for and there are research roles that may be split into two so you might work half as a researcher and a half as a specialist nurse or an advanced nurse practitioner and or again looking across employer websites you'll see these opportunities um available and you've got the different settings
• 11:00 - 11:30 you can work in the community in a gp practice in a prison you can work for charities you can work for private institutions you've got all these different types of roles we don't have um specific standard role definitions across these career pathways we've got hundreds of types of advanced nurse practitioners and specialist nurse roles and educator roles across the uk and we've got different specialisms so you've got so much more choice nowadays
• 11:30 - 12:00 so go out there and see what's out there second tip know how to access support supervision and career advice so you need to find somebody that you trust who's a good role model who offers sound positive and constructive career advice and support and that might be somebody locally or externally now when i started out in my career i wrote my first publication i wrote a letter to the nursing times i think it was late 1980s
• 12:00 - 12:30 or early 1990s now and i was given the wrong advice to be to go into education so i wrote this stroppy little letter to the nursing times saying that there should be career advisors in nursing um so that we are advised correctly this was in the late 1980s and it was published and i then got contacted by somebody in the school of nursing i think at the time who agreed with me
• 12:30 - 13:00 and she started to act as a career advisor for me which was amazing really interesting now because i look at career advising as part of my role so it shows how full circle we've gone and but during my career i had when i first started i was getting advice from the charge nurse in my first role because i wanted to become a team leader in neurosciences but then it became evident that if i was going to go into an educational role that i needed to
• 13:00 - 13:30 look at different people to advise me so talking to lecturer practitioners people the university leads that were running education courses because i wanted sound advice because you need to ensure the advice you're given is correct because you can go down the wrong pathway or apply for the wrong course for example so i've had different people during my career locally externally nationally even that you can network with and that's really important i have a video coming out on post registration
• 13:30 - 14:00 education again that summarizes some of that information third tip aligning your professional experiences and development with your academic development is one of the most important things you can do to support your career development post registration education the connections you make the role models you observe the supervisors and networks of support that you have in place are essential to nurses professional
• 14:00 - 14:30 development so do your groundwork be proactive when you choose roles and career pathways and most importantly be well informed and choose wisely so for newly registered nurses don't leave that first role to chance you deserve you deserve supervision you deserve preceptorship and if you don't get it plan to move and set up your next role and um it's really important that in the
• 14:30 - 15:00 future you look at your academic development in advance which i'll talk through because it links nicely on to the next slide so this is just an example template of the sort of professional development that aligns to i've focused on education role here going up a career ladder and the academic alignment for those of you that are aspiring to go up and
• 15:00 - 15:30 progress on a career ladder i've linked it to the agenda for change pay bans i know that some people [Music] would rather i don't do that or would rather we don't look at the bands but realistically the bands are on most jobs you will see a banding structure that links to the agenda for change and you'll see um bands aligned at an education bands that align to a six and to a band seven for educators and employers will have
• 15:30 - 16:00 slightly different personal specifications but generally the job descriptions align um because they've got to align to agenda for change so professional development if you are looking to become a practice development nurse clinical nurse educator clinical educator it could be called something else at a band six from a band five you'll see that looking in the middle column that usually they will be asking for some experience a one year two year
• 16:00 - 16:30 experience in health care supervising mentoring in practice and an active interest demonstrated in education so if you know that to become a band six that is what they are expecting as a five you can start aligning your professional experiences and you might go and talk to an educator in your area and say i'm really interested in education can i link into your new starter teaching program and do a session on
• 16:30 - 17:00 an area of practice that you're interested in you could do it you could link to education by linking to student nurses and orientating student nurses when they come to your area you could write competencies or look at induction packs for students or for newly registered nurses all of these things link to education and link to in brackets education link role so there's nothing stopping you as a band 5
• 17:00 - 17:30 if you know you're starting to develop that interest of starting to support educators in the role if you don't have any educators then start linking to your line manager and say why don't we look at linking and supporting education in this area on the right hand side you'll see looking at a band six a post qualification certificate in education so that's what i did i did a certificate in education to see because i was quite shy i would never have thought i'd have
• 17:30 - 18:00 been able to get up and do lectures later in my life i did but i started with the certificate in education and you develop confidence you develop tips to help you present as you experience and you learn from your mistakes and then if you look at a band 7 where you're doing more of a leadership you might be linking and supporting other educators covering a lot of areas rather than just one clinical setting for example you might have a little bit more
• 18:00 - 18:30 experience you might have previously worked as a practice development nurse you might be a team leader with transferable skills and you might do a postgraduate certificate in education or a diploma in education or a masters it's not set in stone these academic qualifications or the experiences but you will find that jobs align on the personal specification and it will give you more chance at interview if you start to align in some way your academic
• 18:30 - 19:00 courses and your professional development so i hope that table explains um in some way what i'm trying to explain hopefully it does academic credit it's important as well to think about the academic credits you're doing for courses number one as registered nurses you should be supporting support workers health and social care support workers nursing assistants clinical support workers to do courses because you'll retain them
• 19:00 - 19:30 in their role and they may eventually go on and do an apprenticeship or go and do a pre-registration degree at university and it's helpful to know what credits align so in england we've got the level three um to four to five apprenticeship for say for example for support workers foundation degree level five might link to a nursing associate role pre-registration degree for nursing level six or all registered
• 19:30 - 20:00 nurses should be level six and then masters would be level seven and doctor at level eight and it's important to have an awareness of courses if you're a line manager and i know lots of people have put that slide up in their office for example when they're trying to explain to support workers the um different credit levels and they will be slightly different across universities sometimes and across the four nations as well because scotland has a different quality certificate framework but it's important to know when you're
• 20:00 - 20:30 applying for courses that you understand what level of course you're applying for i do know people that have applied for a course that they thought was a master's course and actually was a level six level post registration course for example and you might have um i know many nurses that tried to get credits on courses then they might do one post registration course at masters and um say for example um i don't know a teaching course
• 20:30 - 21:00 um level seven and then they're wanting to go on and do a leadership in masters and they want to try they think that they can just join it onto a masters with the university and you can't do that you have to go and approach the program lead and see if you can get what's called pellet or get a prior um learning accreditation where you can get credited and if you can get credited that's amazing some people do a course that could have been credited and don't ask the programme lead so that's why
• 21:00 - 21:30 it's important to understand what level and credits you're acquiring as you go along post registration your learning and development choose a collaborative supportive culture that will enable you to thrive if you're newly registered i've got lots of tips of how to help you choose your first registered nurse post if you're interested access support from local educators managers experienced staff and clinical buddies and finding out how education
• 21:30 - 22:00 systems work early on is really helpful and ensuring that you get sign off on your professional development reviews and your annual reviews which will help with you aligning your professional development with your academic courses so number four think a year ahead and this really is because nurse education and applying for courses thinking about your next role is really
• 22:00 - 22:30 important you know nhs trusts community hospital trusts universities reflect business models in that their financial years are um and and spending is organized a year in advance so when you're looking to apply for courses and that request funding and when you're looking at aligning your career you would need to think a year in i've got some good videos coming out on post registration nurse education and
• 22:30 - 23:00 applying for course funding and another video on influencing change and supporting others in your role both of which are linking to this aligning and planning a year ahead the influencing change and supporting others um links to what i mentioned earlier about um thinking about the next role on what your interests are so if you were looking at education you would be supporting students start to do that as a an experienced five
• 23:00 - 23:30 influencing change if you were going to become i don't know go into a clinical academic career or research that you might take on a service improvement project and try and look at leading a project or collaborating and supporting a project in your area looking in advance to do that you need to access support so knowing your clinical educational team structures in your area who's responsible for your immediate long-term learning needs and
• 23:30 - 24:00 professional development and they can advise you and help you align these pathways how are management and educational teams structured where you work do you have corporate education leads or you could work in a very small private um with a small private employer that doesn't have all of these structures that potentially large nhs trusts would have but they can still be key people that will help advise you and enable you to access funding for for
• 24:00 - 24:30 your development local clinical educators and new line managers you need to know how to book on courses how do you request financial support and study leave um paid study leave and study time to attend academic courses and that's all on my previous um the video on post registration education lots of tips on there fifth tip rigorously prepare for interviews as you move up a career ladder or you may go for a role a
• 24:30 - 25:00 sideways move it might be your ideal role the competition becomes higher for roles when you stop at your first newly registered nurse roles currently the situation is we have lots and lots of vacancies um for newly registered nurses in the uk that may change and in five years time it might be very different as i said earlier in the 1980s there was limited jobs i had three posts in england that i could apply for when i failed my nursing
• 25:00 - 25:30 finals there was two in london and one in cambridge completely different to nowadays so it may change but currently there is a lot of option for newly registered nurses as you move up a career ladder or go for sidewood's moves there won't be because there'll be more people applying for less roles that become available so naturally most areas do not have the same number of deputy sisters or team leaders and clinical nurse educators as newly
• 25:30 - 26:00 registered nurses so never presume that you are going to be offered a role and prepare to have the most chance of success and i have a video coming out on preparing for band six seven nurse interviews and that that it would be applicable for education clinical um career pathway research there's just key tips in there for going on to the next sort of level of interview
• 26:00 - 26:30 final tip finally be patient and don't put pressure on yourself your career is not a race it takes time to find a role specialism setting that suits your needs and you may be somebody where you did know exactly where you wanted to go when you start and that's fantastic and i know students that from previous life experiences or they cared for somebody that was ill um had cancer that they knew that that was that area that they wanted to go
• 26:30 - 27:00 into but many people won't know and it takes time you won't know unless you try you develop transferable skills throughout your career you learn from all of those positive experiences and challenging experiences as well i never realized that i would end up mentoring and supervising students when i was bullied by that mentor and was about to leave nursing and i've sort of flipped it on its head really and realized this is good mentorship and
• 27:00 - 27:30 this is terrible mentorship um accessing funding for courses may take time too and ultimately your mental and physical well-being comes before work so i hope some of those tips might help you do put comments in the youtube comments if you've got any questions or any comments on the the tips and you can contact me on my website or dm me on twitter or instagram good luck wherever you go with your
• 27:30 - 28:00 career whatever you do take care