Creating a Professional Development Plan
Paper Details
School: Capella University
Subject: Nursing
Topic: Capella University Professional Development
Course: MSNFP6103
Referencing: APA
Pages: 7
Introduction
This paper aims at developing a professional plan for my professional career as an MSN-prepared nurse practitioner. An MSN degree offers nursing students a specialized set of vital skills to fill the essential healthcare roles in today’s dynamic healthcare. As an MSN-prepared nurse, one can positively influence the healthcare field by offering accessible, cost-effective healthcare to their clients. Therefore, creating an MSN professional development plan provides novice nurses a directional path to transit into their MSN- prepared nurses. An MSN development plan enables the MSN-prepared nurse to explore the MSN scope of practice specific to their states. This professional development plan will incorporate different elements like specific professional goals, scholarship activities or plans, additional social, economic, political, or institutional forces, and development of leadership roles. Additionally, this development plan will incorporate specific strategies to achieve the short-term and long-term professional goals (Horntvedt et al., 2018). Moreover, I hope to utilize my MSN qualifications to educate flexible nurses who can address the gaps in the ever-growing healthcare needs of patients
Specific Area of Focus in Nursing Education
My specific area of focus is in nursing education is to become an MSN-prepared nurse educator, which is a specialty field that focuses on teaching and preparing licensed practical nurses (LP) and registered nurses (RNs) to enter the nursing practice field. A nurse educator can also educate in different patient care settings to offer continuing education to licensed nurses. Nurse education has gained substantial popularity since quality education became the foundation for creating a competent health care staff equipped with the knowledge, attitudes, and skills that are necessary to delivering quality care. The nature of transformation within the healthcare system implies that the nursing education program needs to visualize the future expectations to address healthcare issues affecting the contemporary healthcare field. The MSN program prepares nursing students to lead change by enhancing clinical care quality for their patients (Fiset, Graham, & Davies, 2017). In most cases, effective healthcare delivery in a society is dependent on the level of knowledge about nursing interventions and skills the nurses possess.
I hope to secure employment as a Clinical Nurse Educator (CNE) working within the healthcare system. Persons holding this position are engaged in several activities, incorporating strengthening the nursing workforce, serving as role models, and offer leadership required to implement evidence-based practice (Fennimore & Warshawsky, 2019). As an MSN-prepared nurse specializing as a nurse educator, one will help the healthcare team implement evidence-based practice. MSN-prepared nurse educators develop coursework curriculum, teach nurses, evaluate programs, oversee clinical rotations, and conduct research. Besides, MSN-prepared clinical nurse education specialist is involved in coordinating multidisciplinary teams’ efforts to attain alternative plans to address patient-care issues (Fiset, Graham, & Davies, 2017). I hope to instill a culture of long-life learning by incorporating the best practices acquired through continuous observation of evidence to enhance current care.
As MSN-prepared nurse educators, individuals require some education competencies to enhance their effectiveness while training other nurses. They need to be updated on the latest curriculum guidelines to inspire knowledge creation through evidence and research. Again, nurse educators ought to be critical thinkers, effective problem solvers, and efficient communicators. Additionally, the MSN-prepared nurse educators must display good leadership, good team players, collaborators, practice professionalism, and innovators (Fennimore & Warshawsky, 2019). Having these qualities encourage the evidence-based practice by stirring learning via collaboration.
Specific Professional goals
My first specific goal is to use my knowledge, skills, and theory to identify patient care needs through critical thinking for therapeutic reasons. Currently, there is an increase in the focus on improving healthcare to ensure quality, greater access, and better values for their money. As a result, systematic improvements of the healthcare profession require transformative thinking skills of nurse educators and evolutionary transformations in graduate education to overcome the obstacles in healthcare. Similarly, the creation of knowledge, explosion of technology, globalization, and expansion of diversity underscore the need to prepare nurses to work in a flexible healthcare setting. As a result, my goal is to create an educational program that will help nurses grow excellence through continuous learning. To fulfill this goal, it is vital to fill the gap between theory and practice by progressively evaluate the efficiency of the educational program to offer evidence for good practice and form the basis for enhancing clinical practices in future healthcare (Horntvedt et al., 2018).
Creating a Professional Development Plan
My goal is to develop and lead collaborative teams to improve the lifelong learning of nursing students. Notably, the generation of knowledge generation in the field of nursing is grounded on the full inclusion of EBP in nursing, which depends on the ability of nurses to analyze and evaluate the evidence to improve practice. In contemporary clinical care, nursing practitioners are required to create analytical skills because they are capable of guiding them in to identify valuable information during patient care (Limoges & Acorn, 2016). As a result, my goal is to create a robust collaboration between various specialists and students to examine evidence and how the evidence impacts nursing practice quality.
Finally, my third professional goal is to design innovative practices that will help nursing students translate evidence into clinical care during their practice. Without a doubt, nursing is a sophisticated discipline that is grounded on the comprehension of suffering and connecting with patients (Fiset, Graham, & Davies, 2017). As a result, this goal will directly promote my educational philosophy since the generation of knowledge needs a continuous approach to lifelong learning. Engagement with other MSN-prepared nurse educators will offer me an opportunity to be exposed to new possibilities through the assessment of up-to-date evidence. Again, clinical practices provide a primary benchmark to comprehend the efficiency of various educational approaches in different educational settings within the healthcare field (Fiset, Graham, & Davies, 2017).
Additional forces
Several factors influence a successful nursing education program and determine the success of EBP intervention. The factors can be classified into broader categories associated with the political, social, and economic environment. In the political environment, poor nursing education outcomes are witnessed due to an infinite commitment by the government and limited faculty development plans by educational institutions. Currently, there is no quality and competent faculty to develop knowledge from evidence into practice successfully. There are no plans for developing careers in the nursing field, thus compromising nursing education advancement. This situation results in demotivation, low self-esteem, and poor job performance due to poor job satisfaction. Moreover, nursing education is suffering since the government does not provide enough sponsorship for research in the public and private sectors. The primary focus is to produce nursing practitioners irrespective of the quality of education provided.
In the social and cultural arena, the nursing discipline is affected by introducing perceptions that limit nurse’s participation. For example, many people believe that the nursing profession is designed for low social-economic status individuals. Additionally, nursing is considered as a secondary profession only associated with women. As a result, nurses’ roles are regarded as submissive roles to other healthcare practitioners.
Scholarship Activities
Scholarship activities are some of the foundational elements of nursing that act as the basis for future nursing practice and clinical care. I hope to introduce practices that enhance the quality of clinical interventions via the assessment of recent evidence. One such approach to utilize to participate in scholarly contribution entails inter-disciplinary collaboration (Limoges & Acorn, 2016). Scholarly contribution play a vital role in knowledge generation since it helps in the facilitation of the exchange of valued information concerning a pertinent aspect of patient care. Moreover, nursing education offers an avenue to produce nurse practitioners who can adapt to the dynamic healthcare environment in the future. As a result, I will forge a strong collaboration with nurse practitioners, other healthcare specialists, and nursing students to encourage the identification of better practices in nursing (Limoges & Acorn, 2016). Further, I plan to publish the results of my research reports in a credible health journal for peer review and recommendations. The peer-review will help to shape the direction of research in a manner that aligns with the current changes.
Development of a Leadership Role
Notably, for nursing educators to succeed, effective leadership is essential because it encourages coordination and collaboration between different stakeholders. The first strategy to develop leadership is promoting communication between major shareholders, incorporating students, organizational administrators, and nursing professionals (Fennimore & Warshawsky, 2019). Effective communication is a vital feature of program management because it offers a clear direction, purpose, and course of action. In most cases, the improvement of clinical care through EBP needs collaboration between practitioners and the participants in the educational program, and this requires effective communication between stakeholders. Further, I hope to enroll in an online leadership-building course to enhance my leadership skills and competencies. I will enroll in one of the online courses to comprehend my areas of strengths and weaknesses.
Plans for Professional Growth
Due to my commitment to lifelong learning, I hope to join the American Nursing Association (ANA) to receive professional support for professional development. The American ANA comprises more than 4 million registered healthcare practitioners and is committed to enhancing healthcare via promoting advanced clinical care through supporting advanced nursing education (Goolsby & DuBois, 2017). The ANA provides several benefits to its members incorporating ongoing professional development, residence and fellowship programs, and skill-based organizational accreditation. Moreover, ANA promotes research, sharing of knowledge, and collaboration throughout the US (Goolsby & DuBois, 2017). Therefore, my membership in the ANA will assist in imparting knowledge by offering an opportunity to learn from the experiences of other healthcare practitioners.
Further, I plan to advance my academic qualifications by acquiring a Doctor of Nursing Practice within the next five years. This educational program provides an avenue to advance leadership skills and major in nursing education to sharpen my educator skills. Besides, it offers a chance to appreciate the role of evidence in identifying best practices in clinical research. Notably, doctoral studies incorporate interdisciplinary collaboration and involvement with the audience from the diverse healthcare system, enabling candidates to acquire an in-depth comprehension of the most important features affecting clinical practice quality (Shoghi et al., 2019). In short, acquiring a Ph.D. program will be vital to enhance interdisciplinary collaboration.
Conclusion
Becoming an MSN-prepared nurse educator is critical to promote EBP practice in health to improve the overall society healthcare. As an MSN-prepared nurse educator, I have developed a strong theoretical foundation on curriculum development, future clinical needs, and finding solutions to institutional barriers. I have acquired excellent communication, analytical, and critical thinking skills to improve training outcome goals for nursing students. As a result, I will always be committed to lifelong learning and the inclusion of evidence into future nursing practice. Due to the challenges involved in the healthcare environment, globalization, including other diverse influences, makes nursing education to promote EBP is the most practical approach to systematic learning in nursing. Therefore, nurse educators must be equipped with leadership capabilities via the creation of reliable and collaborative teams that constantly search for evidence to supplement best practices in clinical care.
References
Fennimore, L., & Warshawsky, N. (2019). Graduate leadership education for nurse leaders—needed now more than ever. JONA: The Journal of Nursing Administration, 49(7/8), 347-349.
Fiset, V., Graham, I., & Davies, B. (2017). Evidence-Based Practice in clinical nursing education: A scoping review. Journal of Nursing Education, 56(9), 534-541. https://doi.org/10.3928/01484834-20170817-04
Goolsby, M. J., & DuBois, J. C. (2017). Professional organization membership: Advancing the nurse practitioner role. Journal of the American Association of Nurse Practitioners, 29(8), 434-440.
Horntvedt, M., Nordsteien, A., Fermann, T., & Severinsson, E. (2018). Strategies for teaching evidence-based practice in nursing education: A thematic literature review. BMC Medical Education, 18(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-018-1278-z
Limoges, J., & Acorn, S. (2016). Transforming practice into clinical scholarship. Journal of advanced nursing, 72(4), 747-753.
Shoghi, M., Sajadi, M., Oskuie, F., Dehnad, A., & Borimnejad, L. (2019). Strategies for bridging the theory-practice gap from the perspective of nursing experts. Heliyon, 5(9), e02503.
