You’re a nurse looking to expand your skillset. What continuing education courses should you take?

Determining what skillsets you want to develop is a critical step. Do this before you enroll in training or courses to ensure you're looking for and starting a course that will help you meet your goals.

Como enfermeira interessada em expandir seu conjunto de habilidades, ela está considerando diversos cursos de educação continuada que possam ser relevantes para sua carreira e interesses pessoais. Ela está pensando em fazer um curso avançado em cuidados intensivos, reconhecendo a crescente demanda nessa área e buscando preparar-se para lidar com pacientes críticos de forma mais eficaz. Além disso, está interessada em um curso de gerenciamento de enfermagem, visando assumir cargos de liderança no futuro e aprimorar suas habilidades de gestão e liderança. Ela também está considerando cursos em enfermagem obstétrica e saúde mental, percebendo que poderiam complementar seus conhecimentos.

Nurses have many options when it comes to expanding their skills and knowledge and continuing education courses offer a great way to gain insight into a particular subject. Since there are so many choices available, one should first assess what their interests and goals are to ensure that the course taken will be tailored to their needs. Also, what are you looking to gain or improve on by taking this course? Take some time to explore and reflect to help pinpoint your exact needs.

Finding the best course takes time. Create a chart to compare all of the options so that you're sure about the course before you enroll. This process of comparison can help you feel confident in your decision and ensure you're getting a good return on investment.

It is important to assess what you are looking to expand! There are many different avenues to advance in the nursing profession: clinical care, administrative/leadership, education/research, advanced practice, regulatory, or healthcare support (indirect care of patients such as insurance or health coaching). Once you decide a track of interest, this will better allow you to explore educational opportunities that align with your goals. A good start is reviewing a professional nursing organizations continuing education (CE) offerings, this can be a cost effective way to see if the development opportunities align with your interests, and career goals. There are organizations to support the growth of nurses in many different roles of nursing.

Now that you've assessed your needs and interests, the next step is to decide which courses to take. With so many options available, research carefully into each course to ensure that the course provider is a trusted source. Look to see if the format (online vs in-person) is also a good fit for your needs. Also, it doesn't hurt to ask your colleagues and clinical educators what their sources are. This will help to prevent signing up for courses that are not credible.

The course format is extremely important and can make all the difference in choosing to take it. Before making a selection, look up to see if there are some reviews posted about the course. This can help in determining how the course is structured as everyone has different learning styles and preferences. Look to see if the course offers any variations (quizzes, scenarios, an in-person portion) to help engage the learner more. Doing this will help to further narrow your choices.

Accreditation is important for the educational content you use to learn. Many disciplines in healthcare have articles and continuing education on the internet but these are not always written by someone in the healthcare! They might be reviewed by a nurse, but sometimes they may not work in the speciality that is being reviewed. Money and time wasted on inaccurate information can be frustrating and ultimately set you back on your professional development. Accreditation ensures that the presenter and reviewer have expertise specific to the topic they are discussing.

Accredited education, formal university courses or certified contact hours, will often have a means to assess your growth post learning. You would like to specifically apply the newly acquired information to your role or use it to move forward in your career development. This is also a good time to assess the time and financial output in comparison to the ability to meet your further goals. The education may have opened doors to new roles (i.e. progression from direct care RN to advanced practice role) or improve your current practice. In other cases, education may need to be matched with practical experience to see progression towards a future position change(leadership roles).

While ongoing education is important in any healthcare position, it is important to understand that practical experience is important too. Just as nurses attend classroom lectures and clinical skills experiences in college, advancement also requires practice in both of these areas. Mentorship and job shadowing may help you assess areas of potential progression, prior to signing up for classes in a specific advancement track. Attendance at nursing conferences can help expose you to different people throughout the world of nursing, allowing you to foster connections for future growth opportunities!