Whenever you choose to become a nurse, you might consider yourself at the top of the totem pole whenever you finally make it. You might not want to become a doctor, or you are content with where you are in terms of what you do or how much money you make. However, even if you love being a nurse and don’t see yourself doing anything else, you still need to be learning.
Now it feels silly to think about continuing to learn and push yourself if you don’t want to advance your career, but continuous learning is a very powerful tool in anyone’s arsenal as you try to become better as a nurse. Here’s what continuous learning means and why you need to do it as a nurse.
What is continuous learning?
Continuous learning is whenever you keep on learning in your life, but it isn’t just learning for the sake of learning. It is learning (often for your career) that you will use to become even better as a nurse. Continuous learning is improving your skills and improving yourself, and it can also be extremely good fun.
It can be done formally through studying, attending classes and taking courses, or informally using the internet, books, and self-learning. The important thing is you are not only learning but also using your knowledge and letting the knowledge advance your career.
That’s an important distinction because while you can stuff your brain full of useful and useless facts, for continuous learning to be beneficial, you need to be using the knowledge, digesting it correctly, and learning the right stuff. That means keeping on the current edge and making sure that all your knowledge has a use.
However, as a nurse, continuous learning is something that will provide a ton of benefits for your career and your patients. Here’s why you need to keep on learning and what that looks like in your nursing career!
Constant learning will help you keep your skills sharp
As a nurse, you always need to keep your skills sharp because you will be working with many patients and people who need your help every single day. While many patients are the same with their illnesses and ailments, depending on your nursing field, you should never get complacent with your work. It can be hard doing the same thing or close to the same thing every day, and if you allow yourself to get complacent and go through the motions, your patients will suffer for it.
You might overlook some things, make silly mistakes, or not give problems the attention and care they deserve because you’ve seen them thousands of times. That is bad for you, bad for the patients, and might lead to some serious consequences.
Plus, you can also look at learning like this: Will constant learning allow you to do what you do better? If you are helping patients with their illnesses and ailments, do you want to help them better? If you can become better and find a bigger, faster, and more efficient way to do things, your patients will start to feel better and get better care from you.
Finally, if you are constantly learning and working on your skills and yourself, you will become much more professional. Not only will you become more professional in your life and do more for your patients, but you can also be considered more professional by your patients. If you do a good job and keep your skills sharp, your patients will be more likely to work with you and want to come to you for their needs.
Constant learning keeps you up to date
The world of medicine and medication is going to continue to grow. There are new diseases, new illnesses, new medical problems, and a bunch of different things that affect people medically. Additionally, there are millions of different ways to treat different problems, from medical treatments to more holistic treatments.
Finally, it seems that common questions around the medical world are changing their answers every day. What do I eat? When do I exercise? How much sleep is right for me? So if you truly want to give the best care to your patients, you need to stay up to date on the various changes that the medical field is going through.
Again, if you can learn a different method for completing a beneficial procedure, you will only benefit the lives of your patients! Constantly learning is going to help you always be able to treat your patients no matter what, and that will keep your patients happy.
Especially if you are working with patients over the long term and taking on various challenges with the same person or group of people, if you are constantly focusing on making sure that you are bringing new things to the table for these patients, then you will make things better for them and you.
Constant learning gives some job security
It seems that the world of technology is getting more and more powerful, especially with the world of AI becoming more and more normal. AI and technology are poised to upheave many different fields and job applications in the near future. If you are a nurse, then technology is already something you work with every single day, and it will embrace the world of medicine further.
For many easy and common jobs in the field of nursing, you might find that they are done better by AI. Some job replacements are going to happen as you deal with AI and the rise of technology, but if you continue to learn about your field and become top of the top as a nurse, you can keep yourself relevant as you deal with technology.
The world of technology will keep growing, and even nursing jobs will be replaced by AI and other technology. However, if you continually increase your skills and become better, it will be much harder for you to be replaced. It can be extremely scary to think about the world of AI and how it could replace your work as a nurse, but you need to remember that there are a few things that AI still can’t do. Constantly learning will keep you ahead of technology and allow you to keep on working as a nurse.
Continued education will open new paths
Being a nurse can be a very basic job if you want it to be. You can just get educated with a basic degree and become a basic nurse, which can allow you to do many things in the field of nursing. Do you want to work at a doctor’s office? Do you want to work at a private clinic? Do you want to be a home healthcare nurse?
Of course, being a basic nurse can be an extremely helpful and rewarding career, but also you can find yourself seeking more. There are tons of more advanced nurse positions where you can take on different positions or advance your skills. For example, if you want to be a nurse for mental health as well as physical health, or you want to work with substance abuse, or to be a pediatric nurse, you will need more education and advanced degrees.
This means more advanced learning and the need to continually stay on top of both your old field, as well as developments in the new one. You will need to keep learning and seeking out new challenges to get to these new advanced paths, and continuous learning will help you get there.
How to start learning
Now you have seen the benefits of continuous learning as a nurse, but that still leads to an even bigger question: How do you start learning? Especially if you have been a nurse in the same field for a very long time and don’t know how to move on. Thankfully, there are plenty of different ways to start learning and advancing your nursing career.
It starts with interest. What are you interested in as a nurse? Do you want to learn something new as a nurse? Or do you want to focus on mastering the skills that you are taking on now?
Being interested in what you are learning about will help you overcome any barriers you have regarding the learning, and you will also feel much more excited about the learning process. You can find courses, books, you can use the internet, or you can find a mentor or a school in the field that you want to learn about. Even looking up some of the hot topics and common trends in the world of nursing, and thinking critically about them, is learning and can get you on the right track.
Then you can focus on the education side of your learning because nearly all nursing advancements require some form of education. For example, if you want to become a nurse practitioner, which has a lot of different paths to go down, then you need to find the right degree program to help you get there.
A clinical placement for nurse practitioner students program will be your best bet, like the one you can find at Texas Woman’s University. These programs will allow you to work directly with patients while you are getting your degree, giving you practical experience. You will be training directly under healthcare professionals holding the same degrees and jobs you want to hold, and you can learn directly from them.
If you want to really focus on learning continuously and constantly increasing and leveling up your skills, then finding a clinical placement option with a professional you can learn from is going to kickstart your learning into high gear. You can also find these placement programs in a variety of locations, such as in hospitals, clinics, nursing homes, and long-term care facilities. If you want to be a certain type of nurse, you can look for an option in the right location for you.
Clinical placements are the best way to learn continuously
If you can find and work with a mentor, you will be able to do much more learning in much less time. So don’t be afraid to look for a clinical placement option either by yourself or with a university. This will save you money and time as you focus on learning and becoming a much better nurse.
Don’t stop learning, as it will only make you better
In the world of nursing, you never want to plateau and stop learning because that will not only prevent you from giving your all to your patients, but it can also be extremely dangerous to not be up to speed with the latest medical data. Continuous learning will help you advance and become a much better nurse, even if you don’t want to change your position. And if you do want to become a more advanced nurse or change your nursing field entirely, continuous learning will make that shift even easier for you.
Learning is something that will never be unimportant, especially in the world of healthcare, so don’t forget to schedule some time for learning in your life. Whether you are learning about something you are interested in or just learning to find a new way of providing the same old care, continuous learning provides the challenge and drive we need to be happier and more productive.
So, keep on learning because it is the shortcut to making you a better nurse.
