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Is Your Nursing Career All You Hoped For?

  • Apr 7, 2016
  • Lifespark
  • 3-min Read

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It’s the frosting on my nursing career.

Imagine saying that about the nursing role you are in right now. Can you? Think back to those days in nursing school. Seriously – close your eyes and recall how you felt during those years. Were they filled with fear and excitement? Were you busy writing papers or in lab practicing changing dressings or administering meds? One Lifespark nurse recalled being taught to look at the whole person, another remembers wanting so much to make a difference in someone’s life. How did you feel?

Fast forward a few years and you find yourself in the field doing what you set out to do. Is it everything you hoped it would be? Are you feeling the same way you did when you were in nursing school? In all the research we’ve read about what nurses want out of their career, money was never top of the list. What they wanted was for their career to be meaningful and collaborative. Surprisingly, one study showed how nurses (68-88%) wouldn’t do it all over again if they could go back and choose their career. At Lifespark, we found this fact staggering. What happened along the way? Where did the spark lose its intensity? How can nurses spark client’s lives if they are burnt out in their profession?

We decided to ask our nurses. From those newly hired to Lifespark veterans, a similar theme rang out: our team is sparked. Sue Nelson, RN, said, ‘working at Lifespark brought back the feeling I was a nurse again.’ Tina Belshner, LPN, wasn’t even looking for a job and yet she says, ‘it filled a lot of things I didn’t realize were missing.’ Sometimes you can’t put into words the feeling you get when you start the day and end it feeling really good about the role you just played in changing the aging experience for your clients. Angela Nelson, RN, explains, ‘we have a lot of fun and it’s not that Lifespark nurses don’t work extremely hard – they do – but you know that everybody does and everybody’s got your back and we get it done.’

Perhaps that’s the secret – create a team of like-minded people who are nurses who want to make a difference, and give them the space and support to be creative, love what they do and permission to spark lives. The world needs nurses – people like you – who are compassionate and purpose-driven. We hope every person who decides to become a nurse is able to find a company that can support them in their own personal discovery and spark that calling. And that’s a really good thing, much like frosting on your career.

Join the conversation: If you could do it all over again would you still be a nurse? You are you still drawn to the mission of nursing but frustrated with all that gets in the way of the experience you’re trying to create? If so, our team needs more nurses like you….ready to feel like a nurse again? Explore On!

 

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