Lesson 8

Individual Career Development Plan

            Over the next five years, the plan for my career is not completely known.  I have many desires and aspirations that I hope to accomplish with in my career.  I would like to gain a good base knowledge of nursing and acquire skills in which I will be able to progress and better myself as a nurse.  Not only would I like to develop skills, I would like to gain leadership skills so that I can make advancements within the department in which I work currently.  I have a desire to hopefully begin to level as soon as a position opens.  Preparing for this advancement, I have begun to make necessary steps to get required education in place, along with a knowledge set required to do an acceptable job in this position. 

            Since I am so close to getting a year of nursing experience, I plan to continue working in the emergency department, trying to gain more acknowledgements and certificates to help for when I start applying for graduate school.  I am not 100% decided on whether I want to get my Nurse Practitioner, go the teaching route, or if I would like to go into administration.  I am leaning more towards Nurse Practitioner due to the patient interaction that I would still have.   The idea of working under my own license of course scares me quite a bit.  I have always enjoyed teaching.  I just am unsure whether I want to teach at the college level.  I hope to decide what I want to do in the next year or so.  Once I have decided which route I would like to go, I will then take the necessary steps needed such as the GRE, etc. to start applying to graduate school. 

            I hope that in the next five years I have been accepted to graduate school, possibly having already started school.  I would have liked to have become a charge nurse within the emergency department, hopefully be in a position in which I have some influence with the department.  Though I know that within the next five years I will more than likely not be able to become a manager or a clinical educator, but one of those positions would be a goal that I would love to achieve sometime in my career.  I will be taking it kind of slow for the next few months due to just graduating.  I would like to take a small break in order to recuperate and gain the motivation and desire to accomplish these goals and aspirations.