The Best Careers and Positions in Nursing Administration
Nursing offers a fulfilling and rewarding career path for those looking to make a difference in their patients' lives. The ability to care for others and contribute to their improved health provides great personal satisfaction. Nurses have the opportunity to pursue diverse specializations, ensuring a career filled with learning, growth, and variety.
Once you have some experience in the field, you should consider getting into an administrative position. While this might mean less contact with patients, it is often the best next step for a nurse’s career. There are many administrative positions to pursue, each a little different and requiring different qualifications and experience.
Clinical Nurse Leader
Nurse leaders oversee specific departments and patient populations and are also involved in preventing medical errors and minimizing or eliminating healthcare risks. They are also heavily involved in coordinating care among other professionals, including pharmacists, doctors, nutritionists, and others, and ensuring everyone knows about the latest medical assessments and progress, so they do not miss any details.
By evaluating care plans and patient outcomes, clinical nurse leaders are also tasked with finding ways to improve patient care and outcomes while helping the healthcare facilities they care for avoid liability. These nurses work in private clinics, long-term care facilities, and hospitals.
Director of Nursing
Directors of nursing work with doctors and nursing staff instead of doing so directly with patients. Their responsibilities can vary depending on the instruction, but their primary duties include making sure nurses succeed at their jobs, ensuring all shifts are covered, and ensuring nurses get continuing education if that is something they desire.
Directors of nursing are usually senior nurses with a lot of experience in the field, with their years of being in the field helping them complete their duties. If you love nursing and want to take your career to the next level, you should learn how to become a director of nursing.
Chief Nursing Officers
This executive position is considered among those at the top of the nursing administration rung. Chief nursing officers have numerous duties and can take on several positions depending on where they work and what the facility requires of them. They typically work in group physician practices, rehab facilities, and outpatient clinics.
Perhaps their most important duty is overseeing the activities of all nursing departments, and they are involved in hiring, training, and managing nurses while ensuring they meet the required levels of patient care and standards of accreditation.
Chief nursing officers will also work with upper management to improve operations by conducting research and presenting their findings to other administrative and executive nurses.
Patient Care Director
This position is perfect for nurses who want to get into administration but still work directly with patients. One of their primary roles is working with patients and their families, dealing with questions and complaints, ensuring all patients receive the assistance and support they need, and overseeing administration. They work in hospitals, residential care facilities, outpatient clinics, and home care agencies.
Different careers in nurse administration allow registered nurses to enhance patient care from a managerial position. These upper-rung positions require at least a bachelor’s degree in nursing, collaboration, critical thinking, understanding patient needs, strong research skills, and strong leadership capabilities.
