24//Do I Really Need a Master's Degree to Grow My Nursing Career?

Ever wondered how an advanced degree could help your nursing career? With 17.4% of registered nurses holding a master’s degree, Bonnie explores the transformative benefits of higher education in nursing. 

She breaks down the advantages, from enhanced job opportunities to flexible work schedules, and shares personal anecdotes on how further education broadened her perspective, reinforcing the vital role of nurses in healthcare. Whether you're contemplating further education or seeking to leverage your current qualifications, this episode is filled with valuable advice and real-world examples to fuel your career growth and maximize your potential. 

Tune in for an inspirational and practical guide to purposeful career development in nursing.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

In 2022, 17.4% of the nation's registered nurses held a master's degree and 2.7% held a doctorate degree as their highest educational preparation and doctorally prepared nurses for advanced practice and advanced practice being clinical nurse, specialist certified nurse, midwife, nurse, practitioner and, our favorites, the nurse, anesthetist, clinical specialties, teaching. Of course, because we have a decreased supply of nursing, faculty and research roles, the demand far outweighs the supply, meaning they're just not enough. So if you feel like wherever you are, whatever you're looking for, the market is saturated, it's probably just because of where you are. It's not necessarily because the demand isn't there and more than likely it's. You know it's not saturated. Are you feeling stuck in your current clinical environment? Do you want to make a change in your nursing career but not sure what to do next? Exhausted, burnt out and maybe even ready for different leadership? I'm Bonnie Meadows, a board certified clinical nurse, specialist, influential leader, career coach and well-being coach. Being in the nursing and healthcare profession since 2004, I have felt stuck and unsure about what was next for me. I wanted to be fulfilled in my purpose, to have a voice at the table and to be a resource for others. I kept telling myself I wanted more, but didn't have the direction I needed until I found Clarity and Career Growth Strategies for Experienced Nurses like me. In this podcast, you will find simple tactical steps that allow you to gain the clarity you need, solutions for how to grow even without supportive leadership, and guidelines for setting boundaries at work, so that you can grow purposefully in your career as a nurse with a graduate degree who makes a huge impact in the profession. So get ready to trade your scrubs for yoga pants, pop in those earbuds and let's chat. In this podcast episode, you're gonna find a few key reasons why you should consider getting a master's degree. For some, this may remind you of why you got the master's degree or the doctorate degree and why you need to use it.

Speaker 1: 2:44

When pivoting from my quality job, I narrowed my focus to four key areas. I call this my professional brand. They are nursing, mentoring, nurses, quality and leadership. Those were the four key areas that I was focused on when I was then looking for a new job. I spoke last week or the past couple of weeks about how my quality job was my dream job, but it was actually the worst job that I'd ever had. It led me straight into my. It forced me to go into and to reevaluate what are my passions, what is it that I love to do? And I was bound and determined to make sure that my career trajectory followed that path and I always did a reassessment. If you hear any of my episodes, some shape, form or fashion. I will mention having self-awareness and doing a self-assessment.

Speaker 1: 3:51

Every time I get an itch to do something different, I start that process all over again. So it's not a one and done, because things change, life shifts, or you get more exposure to more things and you think, I think I'd like to do that. So the job I wanted to pivot to required those four key areas. Anywhere I went, whatever I was doing next, it had to encompass at least those four areas. Was doing next, it had to encompass at least those four areas. And I will tell you, I veered from that at times and realized, oh, maybe, like there are times when I can shift out of it, like right now I'm not in the quality piece but I have all the other three elements. And it's not necessarily that I don't enjoy quality, because I do. I incorporate it in everything that I do and the mindset of it, but I'm just not working with the numbers of it. And you know, going through a whole implementation process.

Speaker 1: 4:57

Do I do that in my current job and in my everyday work? I do because I work on projects all the time, but I had a narrowed focus because I already had a master's degree in nursing. That lowered the barrier of entry that I needed to overcome in order to move on very quickly and that master's degree allowed more options of what I was qualified to do and could apply for. I have two master's degrees, both of them in nursing. So one is a postmaster's certificate and the other one is a master's degree, and I'm definitely not opposed to going back and getting a doctorate degree. It is just a matter of how does it line up with what I'm currently doing, where I'm currently going and current plans? Right now I am president-elect for my state's nursing association and I will be in that role for at least four years four or five years and I'm currently building this business, this coaching business, which is really my passion. Like that, work is my passion too. So I'm in this sweet spot of working in my passion and doing things that are within my passion. There's a growing passion of a subject area of advocacy that I'm growing in in my president-elect role.

Speaker 1: 6:23

I'm a firm believer that more degrees give you more options. Now you definitely have to weigh the options, like I was in a space where I was like I'm an advocate for a doctorate degree but I'm still trying to figure out where that fits for my life, because getting a doctorate degree doesn't necessarily mean that it's more money. And that leads me to my number one reason to not get a graduate degree or I kind of got two, but the number one reason is that you want to make more money, because it's not necessarily a guarantee it could lead to that, but it's not automatic. You probably you get a. You get a better jump if you're going from bachelor's degree to master's degree.

Speaker 1: 7:08

But when you're going from master's degree to doctorate degree and you're in a hospital setting and I'm mainly talking to nurses who are in a hospital setting and I'm mainly talking to nurses who are in a hospital setting as a nursing profession we are just coming around to the doctorate of nursing practice and nursing practice and there are more and more nurses who are like that is the fastest growing doctorate degree. The PhD is actually on a decline or very stagnant and they are actually trying to increase enrollment in PhD programs and they are actually trying to increase enrollment in PhD programs. But the options for the doctorate degree in nursing practice is opening up, especially if you're in a somewhat not necessarily admin role or nursing support but you're in a more of a nursing support role Jobs that require a doctorate of nursing practice. Hospital systems are still trying to figure out how to create that. I will say for me Lord, I'm going on a tangent, but I feel like this is important my degree in the clinical specialist is a master's degree. I just heard the other day that our national association has decided not to make the DNP the actual like you have to go back and get a DNP if you're going back to be a clinical nurse specialist. But I've heard from many of my colleagues that the work that we do in our clinical nurse specialist programs somewhat of a repeat in your doctoral program, except it just gives you the space and time to really use those tools and to expand on them and to grow them.

Speaker 1: 8:44

I said all of that to say back to my number one, my number one thing. The number one reason not to get a graduate degree is to make more money, is because you want more money, because you could get the degree but not have the skills or not have the exposure and you're still not able to move. Do you have more options of jobs to apply for? Absolutely, but what have you done around that work? That is important. And the other reason to not get a graduate degree is you don't see the value.

Speaker 1: 9:16

So I believe every person should get a graduate degree by going back to school to grow their career. Now, can you grow your career without a graduate degree? I mean I never say never. And I'm sure there are people I've seen I read Becker's review and I've seen many of those articles and I've seen VPs with a bachelor's degree in nursing. I mean it just happens. So I'm not going to say never, say I'm not going to say you'll never, but you will increase your chances of career growth if you go back and get a graduate degree. So I am here to help you to understand the reasons for going back and getting a graduate degree.

Speaker 1: 9:59

If you're on the fence about it, there are many of you who are like I want to grow my career and I want to make money. If you're just looking to make money and that's it, you can do something else and not go back and get a graduate degree. So that leads me to my number one point. The number one reason to go and get a graduate degree is to make money. Now, I know I just contradicted myself, but stay with me here.

Speaker 1: 10:26

When you are at the bedside working in the hospital, you will hit a ceiling in how much you can make at the bedside. There's a range. You negotiate within the range, but there's a range, and the hospital has about thousands of nurses so they're not going to adjust it just for you, unless you're coming from like. They'll consider cost of living, they'll consider where you're coming from. If you came from California and you're here in North Carolina, the pay is much different. So they're going to make those adjustments, but it's still going to be within the range. Some of you may have even topped out at your salary. They'll give you a bonus, but that's it. You could travel and make more money traveling, but if that's not your thing and you decide to stay within one company and move around, then making more money requires getting another degree period, point blank. It increases your ceiling to making more money. And then the other piece to it is is that clinical advancement programs require higher degrees to make more money. So if you have an associate's degree, they require a bachelor's degree in order for you to get that extra percentage. If you have a bachelor's degree, if you want a certain percentage, you can go. I know within my hospital system you can go as high as getting a doctorate degree working at the bedside and then that's when you get about a 20% increase, which is substantial, required another degree. Okay, all right.

Speaker 1: 12:02

So next, next point, getting a graduate degree provides more nursing job opportunities. So I said, when I was leaving my quality job and going into going back into nursing, because that was my desire, my options were very wide, open and specifically a master's degree in nursing. So what you can apply for with a bachelor's degree in nursing versus a master's degree in nursing is drastically different. And even when a job requires a bachelor's degree in nursing but prefers if it says prefers a master's degree, then the person with the master's degree is likely to get the job before you because of the higher level of education, even if they have less qualifications than you. I said likely, it's not an absolute, and this is something that you should consider. You need to consider. You want to lower the barrier for them to say you're just not the right fit right now. Now, sometimes you're just not the right fit and you're not the right fit for them and they're not the right fit for you. But some jobs that provide more flexibility require a master's degree. So if you're looking for flexibility in your work although it may be five days a week there's an opportunity for flexibility there. If you're applying for that job that has a master's degree, your opportunities open up for a more flexible work schedule, okay.

Speaker 1: 13:42

Lastly, for career growth. I mean, isn't that what we're here for? This is also not an absolute or end-all be-all, but having a master's degree certainly makes it easier for you to grow your career. But the master's degree is just the start. You also have to look the part. It is not enough to have the degree, but it makes it easier for you to grow in your career. And, let's face it, much of what we do is about perception. It's how people perceive us. The degree many times puts you in rooms you would not have thought about being in, about going to or being a part of. So it's important to get the degree to help you to grow, because even during that time, even that time during getting your degree, it helps to expose you to different areas of nursing that you would not have been exposed to in a bachelor's degree program. They can't cover that. Even when you're going back to, as some people say, get the BS part of the degree, you're just not exposed to it and what you really need for career growth of the many things that I talk about is exposure and going back and getting the master's degree. In those programs you get a good, robust program and you'll get some exposure to different areas of healthcare and nursing. It really helps you to think about. Huh, I like that.

Speaker 1: 15:11

When I was getting my first master's degree, which is a master's degree in nursing or master's of science in nursing, health systems management was my track. It's the same thing as nursing leadership, but they just kind of changed the words. It might be changed to something different now, but it's the same thing. And we took classes with the MBA program. They actually had a dual MSN and MBA and I thought about going back to get my MBA but I was like, nah, I'm not going to do that. That's not necessarily off the table either, but that's another conversation for another day. I love school, y'all, but I took a class in economics, economics, y'all that was hands down. I would say probably out of my entire nursing, out of my master's degree program, the most impactful were my nursing theory class and this is my first master's my nursing theory class in economics. It opened my eyes to the possibilities and the way to apply economics to healthcare Mind-blowing, which is why I'm so passionate about the value of the nurse.

Speaker 1: 16:25

And so, lastly, my last point in this area for career growth. It expands your thought process to the possibilities of what is open for you in your career and the impact you can make. So I'm going to recap there are three reasons why you should go and get a graduate degree To make more money, to have more nursing job opportunities or job opportunities in general, because sometimes in health care they just require a master's degree. And then for career growth. Those are the three reasons why you should go back and get a graduate degree.

Speaker 1: 17:07

At some point in time I will begin to kind of help to talk through that decision-making process in what master's degree to get, because what I'm finding is that not every nurse wants to go back and be a nurse practitioner and not every nurse wants to go back to school to get a master's degree to be a nurse manager. You want to grow, you want to be in leadership, but y'all, there are more options out there than that. I love my nurse managers and I love my nurse practitioners, and in an episode in the future, I will talk about the way that I, as a clinical nurse specialist, have collaborated with those two roles, and we partner well with those two roles. Um, but I know that many people don't want to grow in that direction. Or either you choose it as a default, thinking that that's the only route that you can go. It's not, um, so get your graduate degree. Start thinking about getting your graduate degree so you can open up your possibilities of growth. All right, See you next time.

Speaker 1: 18:10

I hope you enjoyed today's episode. If so, would you take 30 seconds and share it with another nurse who may be unsure of where to go next in their career or maybe need some career clarity? Also, please leave a quick review for the show on Apple podcast. It brings me so much joy and so much encouragement to know this podcast is helping you. Now go get the career you want and not the one you settle for, and I'll meet you back here next Thursday for another episode. See you soon.