What Else Can I do?
I was dwelling on this question after a Nurse friend of mine had been musing a change of direction.
I started to reflect on my years Nursing thinking back to when I was working on the wards initially. That period of my life was incredibly fulfilled.
When I think back now it blows my mind.
I want you to take some time to reflect on some of the things that you have done and seen and experienced in your journey as a Nurse. It may be that you have already done this but I think it is monumental.
Since my early twenties, I have been honing experiences and skills that are so unique to nursing and so alien to most people.
I mean this on a very real, very practical level, that we are a group of uniquely skilled and experienced individuals. In our day to day life, in our roles at work, if you pick apart all of the different duties that you cover, many of you will see that these include aspects of HR, finance, teaching, mentoring, counselling, life skills, practical skills, management, auditing, facilities. A whole plethora of skills, A whole plethora of skills that you are tapping into every day in your role at work without a second thought. And yet when it comes to thinking, “Gosh, what next? What could I do?”, we are at a loss.
For me that is just crazy. I see Nurses as incredibly well placed for setting up their own businesses because of all these skills and experience that we already have. These are skills that are required for business.
I think that when Nurses just look towards the aesthetics industry,that they are doing themselves a disservice unless they really do specifically want to get into aesthetics.
It is my belief that there are a number, a wide number, of options for nurses to develop ideas, be creative, be innovative, and set up incredible small businesses.
So if you are one of those nurses who is starting to think, “Gosh, I am ready, I dont know what to do next, but I feel up for doing something,” then this is really for you because this is a great time for us, as a profession to start to help each other, network with each other, raise our profile, and to become innovators. It is 2020 and there is no better time than now for us to start thinking ahead, challenging some of the stereotypes that are out there, being brave, being bold, and really coming together to support each other to do that.
So that is where you fit into this whole project.
I would really like you to do something regardless of where you are at in terms of thinking about starting a business or not. I think this is a really useful exercise for you all to do, just to really take some time out to acknowledge the wealth of experience and skills that you already have. I want you to get yourselves a journal. Starting from your Nurse training right through all of your jobs. I want you to do analyse the day-to-day of those training, education, employment experiences and the skills that you used actively during those times. In your journal I want you to take a page for each different category that you can think of that applies to you. So these are going to be categories such as HR, finance, teaching, counselling. On each of these pages under the category heading, I want you to make a really brief note of what it was that qualified as being a finance skill, or being a teaching skill, or being a management skill. Then once that is done, I also want you to do the same for your non-work life. These quite obviously are going to require different categories. For this section you may include skills such as parenting, dog training, cooking skills, budgeting.
I really just want you to think about all of the different skills that you have developed yourself over the years in order to be where you are right now at this point in life.
Add a brief description under each category heading as to what the actual activity was. It is a really useful exercise to set down in black and white all of the wealth of things that you have achieved, of skills, experience that you built up over the years. It is an exercise of self worth, of acknowledgement. But it is also a useful and practical exercise as well.
This is the first step towards your future and will provide a foundation document that will help to guide you going forwards.