Nursing Careers
Are you overwhelmed by your work as a nurse, student loans, and your family responsibilities. “Social life, what the hell is a social life???”
It can be hard to think about the future.
That’s why I’m here. Here to help you learn about other career-nursing and non-nursing choices.. If you are unhappy in your present job, quit whining and take action.
Action to make something happen. Dreams stay a dream till you start to plan. Then it’s a Goal. A real life target. Something to shoot for. You get it, don’t ya.
I’m beginning a series of interviews of nurses in different career paths. I know you will find them interesting even if you think your work life is settled.
You Never Know!
Nursing Career Interview
In this inaugural edition of Nursing Career Conversation, I am excited to share with you an interview with Kathryn Clayton MSN, RN, MBA, ALNC. Please listen to the podcast of the interview as well.
Kathryn Clayton MSN, RN, MBA, ALNC
Kathryn is a program manager for Contemporary Forums. Contemporary Forums is a leading provider of continuing education conferences, mainly for nurses.
Kathryn is in charge of putting together live conferences all over the country each year. These conferences range from intensive care, to pediatrics, and even leadership training for nurses.
The company tries to choose conference sites that are conducive to a quality meeting for a reasonable price. Contemporary Forums also now has online courses with CE available for a very reasonable cost.
Kathryn’s brief Bio:
Kathryn graduated from University of Michigan with a BSN, and went on to obtain a masters specializing in maternal health.
After a few years in acute care nursing, administration, and research, she eventually went back to school for her MBA. She spent time in medical device marketing before getting into the business of managing continuing education for nurses at Contemporary Forums.
Here is summary of my conversation with Kathryn…
Dr Dean: What is your role in Contemporary Forums?
Kathryn: I am the program manager for the company. I help pick out the curriculum, arrange for speakers, provide feedback on conference site selection, and help with marketing of the course. During the conference, I make sure the meetings run smoothly. I support the speakers and course attendees in whatever they need to make the conference a success.
Dr Dean: Why should a nurse attend a conference instead of getting online training or taking courses through journals?
Kathryn: The conferences allow time for nurses to interact with the speakers. We frequently have round table discussions with opportunity for engagement of the speakers. There is also time to get to know other attendees and network with your peers.
We have nationally recognized speakers and we keep up with what is happening in the world of nursing-so our courses have real world value.
My feedback from attendees is always positive about the amount of value that they received from the conferences. They go home excited about what they have learned and are ready to share information with their co-workers.
The networking aspect is a great way to learn how other facilities and peers are handling problems or issues at their facility and also can be a way to hear about other career opportunities that might exist in other parts of the country.
Our company understands the investment required to attend our conferences and our goal is for everyone attending to feel they received value for their money.
Dr Dean: What are Contemporary Forums most popular conferences?
Kathryn: A Slice of NTI, which is an Intensive Care oriented conference-a collaboration with the AACN- is one of our more popular conferences, but there are many other well attended meetings. Most of our conferences are 2 1/2 days with pre-conference specialty classes frequently offered. We hold them in great locations.
Dr Dean: How did you get from where you are now-from your initial acute care job?
Kathryn: Like most nurses I didn’t know anything about anything but acute care nursing when I graduated. I always liked business so I gradually became more interested in the management aspects of nursing. I did assist with research grants and projects in maternal health. Each step of my career I met new people and became interested in new opportunities.
I stepped into a sales job-which at the time was a little unusual for nurses. I also managed conferences which included live demonstrations of certain interventional coronary procedures, and that eventually led to my moving into a job in business outside of the acute hospital setting
Dr Dean: What are your recommendations for nurses who might be looking for another career?
Kathyrn: I strongly recommend nurses interact and use all opportunities to network with other nurses in other career fields. Remember the passions of your youth and try to find an opportunity that will combine your nursing skills and knowledge with your interests. That’s the best way to have a fulfilling career.
Nursing Career Summary:
Kathryn has a fascinating job. Unfortunately, there are not thousands of similar jobs available. Many nurse conferences are sponsored by non-profit nurse organizations so there are other jobs in this arena. Similar jobs in communications/program management in hospital systems have salaries that range from $70-90,000/year.
These non-clinical jobs require skills you can pick up as you move along in your career. Always keep your eyes open, learn as much as you can about the world around you. You never know when opportunity might pop up.
It could be a patient or patient’s family talking about their business. It could be a co-worker with a great idea. Nurses learn many skills during their working career-computer skills, hospital infomatics, working with peers, and people management. Making sick people and their family more healthy and comfortable is an art that is transferable to many other jobs.
Take advantage of all your opportunities.
Comments and Questions:
Make sure you let me know your dreams. Are there career opportunities you want to learn more? Let me know and I will do my best to find someone in that field.
Make sure you follow me on Twitter @DrDeanBurke- quick links on the side of the blog!
Friends, I love friends-check out my Facebook page, and I’m definitely Linked-In-use the shortcuts on the side-that’s why I paid my Web Master of the Universe Ben the big bucks to put em there-save you time!
Tags: contemporary forums, different nursing career choices, nursing careers, nursing dream jobs, nursing jobs
Many nurses would do very well in the nursing informatics fields. Unfortunately, many believe you need to be a programmer to get into this exciting field, but really, if you can write an email and attach a file to it, most likely you can apply for an entry level position as a clinical analyst, and then move up in the ladder.
Maybe you could tell us more about it?
Because of meaningful use (http://healthit.hhs.gov/portal/server.pt?open=512&objID=2996&mode=2), many hospitals are rushing to implement EMRs to meet this government requirement. Many times hospitals are looking for actual nurses to help with the implementation of these applications. They want nurses to act as super users or trainers.
As a super user, a clinical nurse is trained to use the system so she can train others. However, from my own experience, many nurses are hesitant to volunteer to do this because they believe they have to be computer geeks when the reality is, all you have to do is learn how to use the application. Of course, many others say they don’t have the time and they don’t know the opportunity they are wasting.
Now if you take the opportunity and ,you prove to be a good trainer (and most nurses are), you can then be offered a job to configure the application, and most applications are like windows xp, or windows 7. In other words, if you want to change the desktop picture in windows, you don’t write code, you simply go to the control panel and with a few clicks, you change the picture. No coding involved.
Same thing with most EMRs. You use control panel like environments to configure the application. And that’s why I say, if you can write an email and attach a file, you can do this job. You don’t write code to attach a file to an email. Of course, there are jobs that require programming, but those jobs are for those with a computer science degree. And yes, sometimes you do have to use critical thinking skills, but most nurses possess that.
My main point is that as you mentioned in your post, nurses do have a lot of opportunities, but somehow they believe they don’t have the right skills, and yes, I have seen people in this field of informatics, telling nurses that they need special skills or degrees, but the reality is that many times you just need to network with the IT department in the hospital and try to volunteer as a super user. You can then use that experience to look for a job without having to go and get another degree in computer science or a masters degree in nursing informatics. Anyway, I created a blog (http://www.nursinginformaticshq.com) with a lot of this info because I get this question a lot—how do i get into this (informatics) field?
Thanks for more info! And good luck with your blog!
[...] series of interviews with nurses about career opportunities and nursing jobs-outside of acute care [...]
[...] of Carnival of Wealth.Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there!CareersDr. Dean presents Nursing Career Conversation posted at Dr. Dean’s TheMillionaireNurse.com Blog, saying, “Whether you are in the [...]
I think this is an interesting interview, but my passion has always been with nursing, and I would not like to change careers in the same way. However, I think to encourage more people into the nursing profession, more should be done to promote it as a career choice.