13// Nursing Career Growth Series: How to Find Your Nursing Niche as an Experienced Nurse

In this latest episode, I unravel the secrets of uncovering and honing your unique nursing niche. 
I'll walk you through the pivotal questions that can reshape your professional journey, providing insights on how to thrive amidst the ever-changing landscape of healthcare, and how to turn obstacles into stepping stones towards your ultimate career destination.

Whether you're a detail-oriented planner or a visionary thinker, harnessing self-awareness is key to amplifying your impact and satisfaction in nursing. 

Discover the transformative influence of self-awareness on both personal growth and team dynamics in the world of nursing. I dive into the nuances of emotional intelligence and how it shapes our interactions and you'll learn to leverage your innate strengths and acknowledge areas ripe for development. 

A fulfilling career is not an accident, but the result of intentional choices and self-discovery. So join the ambitious nurse community, and let's navigate the path to aligning your career with your calling, one insightful conversation at a time.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:05

Welcome to the ambitious nurse podcast, where I provide tips tools and resources for the experienced nurse to put in your career bag, to help you be a better person, a better leader, a better professional, and most of all, a better nurse. I'm your host Bonnie Meadows, a career coach, and a clinical nurse specialist with over eighteen years of experience in healthcare and nursing. It's my passion to help experienced nurses develop their careers to impact healthcare and their communities. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining me today on this podcast episode where I dig a little deeper in to how to find your nursing niche. That is a question that comes up a lot. And I wanted to try to address it and give you some examples of how to discover it how I've discovered my nursing niche. And then some questions to ask. It's gonna be an episode of really making you think about what is important, what is not important, where do you need to dig deeper into figuring out your niche and where you need to be, where you should be the direction that you should be in nursing. There is a quote that I have gathered or I saw from a follower or a person who I follow. And she has a podcast called Journey to Launch. I usually read her emails in every once in a while I listened to her podcast. Her podcast is about her journey to financial independence. And sometimes she'll have just different things in relation to Chris and things like that. I'm really into financial podcasts. I'm not necessary literally one of those people who's like, oh, I have to retire at fifty and and just do nothing. Y'all, I'm a worker. So I'm I'm always going to be working. It's just a matter of for me making sure that my work is focused on the mission and the vision that I believe that God is leading me into versus me just retiring just to do what? And so as you know, if you if you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you'll know and understand, and you will have heard me probably say that your decisions need to be strategic. And that is one of the ways that you can really figure out your nursing niche. One one thing I will say is that there's no one thing that can take you straight to, oh, yes, this is this is how I discover my nursing niche. There are several things that you have to do and several approaches that you need to take. And even once you do these exercises, it's not going to become clear until you just continue to take action. So it's not like I can give you all of these exercise us today. And then all of a sudden, it will just you will you will discover some things, and there are some things that will come to light. But it will not help you to make a firm decision on, oh, this is the exact next step that I'm going to take. You're still not going to know until you just continue to take action. And so those are some of the words that is a phrase that you will always hear me say like you have to take action. I was just recently in a situation where I needed to change jobs. I needed to move. I needed to do something different. And I was like you all, I was stuck. Like some of you, everyone that that listens to this podcast is not. Not always stuck. But everyone's looking for growth, growth opportunities, and ways to advance in their careers, and that's what I like to try to provide for you, but I was stuck. I was and not necessarily that I hated where I was, but there was there was a shift that I needed to make. And I didn't I honestly I kinda knew what I was supposed to do. But I didn't know until I took action. Until things started to unfold as I took action. And my obedience in that action then made clear to me. Oh, this is why I needed to go in this direction. So, as we I just wanted to put that disclaimer out there as I begin to talk about discovering your nursing niche. Because it's not a one stop shop. It's an ongoing journey. And even the questions and the prompts that I give you in this podcast on today, will be ongoing as you go throughout your career. So these are foundational elements that regardless of whether you have your master's degree, your bachelor's degree, you are now a manager and you wanna go to a director level or a director you wanna go to and then and assistant vice president level or whatever the case may be. These are still questions that you need to ask. Yourself at every level. So this this process came about when I In two in twenty sixteen, I was in my dream job. It was a job that I had been personally, it was work. It was work. Not not not necessarily the job, but it was the type of work that I had been pursuing for a couple of years. And the job was very intense so much so that I worked very closely with presidents and vice presidents and within the health care sector. And got the job and learned a lot, but that was also my first experience with a lateral violence. The lateral violence wasn't my co workers. It wasn't my direct boss. But was someone else who was a leader in my space and could have influence on my work. But wasn't the one who wrote my checks or signed my checks rather? But because they had so much influence in that space and their bullying was so strong. It it took over with what my manager could do, and it influenced what everyone else around me in that space thought. She was able able to change everyone's thought And within that time, I had to I was ten years into nursing. I had to constantly rely on the fact that I I had a track record of a good work ethic. I had a track record of having nothing but excellence and high remarks on reviews, so I knew it wasn't me. It was the situation. But when you're in the dream job and you need to figure out something new, then it's like, well, what what am I gonna do? Now you're stuck. Now I'm stuck. I'm like, I This is what I thought I was gonna do, like, forever and just expand from here. I was like, oh, well, after this, the the possibilities are endless. And what I found myself having to do probably for the first time I'd probably I'd been doing it for a long time, but that's what that situation helped me to develop. The framework that I'm going to talk about today, and it helped me to understand that when you are trying to advance your career, you need to first get into a discovery phase. You need to discover. And you may have I've talked about this minimally on when I talk about the framework for professional attention in my business, so I've shared it there. But I also want to continue to reiterate it because it's such a vital piece of growing your career. And so you will hear me talk about this all the time. You've probably heard me talk about, say this before, if you've listened to the other podcast episodes. But to me, there's this need for a discovery phase. Like, once you to get out of that frustration, you need to start the process of your discovery phase. That discovery phase includes developing a new level of self awareness. If you didn't have it, if you didn't, you you either need a beginner level, or if you already have a level of self awareness, you need a refreshed level of self awareness. Then what you have developed and refreshed your level of self awareness. You need you need to take that information and begin to build confidence. And if you're building confidence, That means you're reducing your impostor syndrome so that you can then approach and agree with who you are step into it, step into who you are in this new space and in this new time. And then begin to list out. This is my personal and professional brand. And this is what I am. This is my mission going forward. So today, I wanna dig a little bit deeper into developing self aware So let's start with what is self awareness. Self awareness is knowing what you like, your traits, your behaviors, and your feelings. It's a state of focused attention on oneself. The ability to be self aware is really a big part of who we are, but it's not something that we are always slightly focused on. Because of this, many of us have a rather low level of self awareness. Meaning we aren't necessarily aware of who we are in the space that we walk into. This meshes in very very well with emotional intelligence. Because when we have an awareness of who we are, then we're also walking into the room and gathering a sense of awareness of how other people are and where they are in that space emotionally. Are they stressed? Are they subdued? Do they look confused? And in your mind because you're self aware. Good example. If you're self aware, and you see somebody and your emotional intelligence is telling you that this person looks confused but I'm so aware that I can talk a lot and may not necessarily always be clear in what I am conveying in the message that I am conveying. So then I asked the person do they understand? Can you tell me what it is that you you took forum or what it is that I just can you repeat back to me what I just said? What questions do you have? That type of thing. Helps you to have a higher when you're at working at a higher level of self awareness, then that's what you tend to do. And so that's what self awareness is. It's it's that first step to really maximizing your potential Because when you are self aware with who you are, then that helps to remove those questions of who am I not? Or what am I not doing? Or or you're more clear. And you're less likely to take criticism very very harshly. Because other people can see you as being one way and you can be trying to convey yourself as being another. But it also helps when someone really is being critical of you and you know that that's not who you are it helps you just to just kind of delineate and just say, that's not who I am in your mind. You take it in. You understand, you know, where they're coming from. You try to decipher, is this true? Is this not true? But you can't decipher if it's true or if it's not unless you really are self aware and you understand who you are and how you operate and how you try to operate in spaces. Self awareness can become woven in and emerges in different ways depending on the situation and your personality. So by being self aware, you can improve your judgment and identify professional and personal development opportunities. And this also goes back to an example that I have made previously of. I am not I've become self aware enough to know that I am I am not a very detail oriented person. I don't get caught up in the weeds. I'm very big picture, very strategic thinking of. Here's the big in goal that I wanna get to and then I walk my way back for those who are in the research research space is called that inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning. And so because I am a self aware of that, I understand also though that I worked at a nice u. And so I'm like, well, I can't be that off when it comes to details. And so what I've learned about me is that it's just really only in certain situations where I get detail oriented or I'm a singer. I've been singing for a long time, and I've been singing with very professional individuals. That that have helped me to tune my ear. So I get very detailed when it comes to singing. Especially when I'm hearing voice parts. So it's that's what I've learned about me. That's what I've come become a way out. That's the thing that I've become. That's what I know about me. That's the self awareness piece that I do understand that I need professional development in. And I I use that as there are two ways that I can develop professionally in that. One, so I always surround myself or have someone on the team. Who is very detail oriented. Because I've even found that when I have somebody who is on my team working on a project that is very detail oriented, I can pull them in when they are too detail oriented because we're ruminating someplace for too long. And I'm also the person who will pull you out and just be like, wait. We're we're we're here for too long. Does this really meet the goal? Okay. If it's not, let's just move on Let's just keep going. And it also helps me to be aware of, okay, well, I need to continue to develop my project management skills. I need to continue to develop my organizational skills. And those are some things that I do want to work on and do want to develop. Every opportunity that you identify doesn't always have to be worked on. The question is, is that thing that you've identified in your self awareness assessment? Is it going to yield you a better result if you work on it? If it has nothing to do with your career path, Don't even worry about it. Like, why are we even worried about that? And so I just wanted to give you start off this series with What is self awareness? And so self awareness has much to do with your career growth and you developing your career path. Because once you develop that level of self awareness, then from there, you can start to work on those things. You can start to build out those characteristics that you wanna focus on in your career path. So as we go on go throughout this series, I'm going to continue to This is one of three podcasts that I'm going to use to focus on digging deeper into self awareness. As we talk about how to build out our nursing career path. So I hope that you tune in the next time as we dig a little deeper into this subject. Thanks. If you would like for me to help you walk through, your self awareness assessment, and really try to figure out what are those essential elements that you need to help to develop your career path in order for you to have clarity about your next steps. I put a link in the show notes so that you can jump on a call with me. It's a one hour call where I will take you through a series of questions. And we will talk through your self assessment and help to develop and cultivate your self awareness so that you are better equipped as you're going into interviews, as you're networking, as you're going to professional organization meetings, as you are meeting mentors, build better relationships, that will help to build out your nurse and career path. Thanks for joining us this week on the ambitious nurse podcast. To review the show notes and any links mentioned in today's episode, please go to the ambitious nurse podcast dot com. If you enjoyed this conversation, follow or subscribe so you don't miss a future episode. Also, please consider leaving a rating, review, and or comment about what you want to hear. This helps more nurses just like you find this podcast. Thank you for joining me, Bonnie Meadows, on the ambitious nurse podcast. I look forward to chatting with you the next time. And remember, you don't have to grow your career alone. As iron sharpens, iron one person sharpen another. Thank you for letting me sharpen you as you take this knowledge to sharpen the next.