As a nurse, you might feel underpaid and overworked at times. However, with many different opportunities available for nurses who progress through the ranks, studying for an advanced program such as an RN to MSN program could be your ticket to more responsibilities at work, a higher salary, and better job security and opportunities for the future. We’ve listed some of the best ways in which a master’s degree could help to take your career as a nurse to the next level.
Working in Management
With a master’s degree in nursing, you will be more of an eligible candidate for higher-paid jobs such as a senior nurse, nurse manager, ward manager, or even on the board of directors for a hospital. Along with that, nurses who have studied at master’s level often go on to manage their own teams in hospitals and other types of practices, with some specializing in areas such as family or geriatric nursing. For more information about where a master’s in nursing could take you, see these masters in nursing program details.
Further Study
Once you have completed nursing school and qualified as a registered nurse, the opportunities for further study are endless. And, once you’ve graduated with your master’s degree in nursing, you can go even further and perhaps even teach nursing at college to students, as academics in the field of nursing are currently in very high demand due to the nursing shortage in the U.S. If you’d like to specialize in a certain field of nursing, find out more information about masters in nursing degree courses.
Nurse Practitioners
For many nurse practitioner degrees, you will need to have gotten a master’s degree in nursing beforehand along with having a certain number of hours of work experience. If you want to advance your career to the point of becoming a nurse practitioner and perhaps even starting your own practice, taking a masters degree in nursing will bring you one step forward to that dream becoming a reality.
More Job Security
As you become more and more qualified in nursing, you will be up against less competition and therefore along with having a higher chance of landing the jobs that you want, you’ll also be rewarded with a greater degree of job security. Today, with the U.S. already experiencing a shortage of nurses in their hospitals and clinics and the aging population needing an increasingly higher standard and level of care, highly qualified nurses are some of the most sought after professionals in the country. And, if you ever want to work abroad, qualified nurses from the U.S. can find great opportunities and job security in a wide range of other countries around the world.
If you’ve qualified as a nurse and are wondering what to do next, a master’s degree is often the logical next step. With a master’s in nursing, you will be able to go on to find bigger and better opportunities, such as working in management or taking a step closer to qualifying as a nurse practitioner.
