What are 4 Goals to Have as a Nurse?

A nursing portfolio is meant to help a nursing student organize goals and accomplishments for an eventual job search in healthcare and patient care. A portfolio will also house achievements throughout a nurse's career. It is important to add ambitious but achievable, smart goals to a portfolio to keep yourself interested in your work, and to show employers that you intend to involve yourself with professional development and constantly work to improve your skills. Career goals are always needed for professional careers, whether they are measurable or not. These set goals can help with progress towards certifications, specializations, personal life needs, patient safety, working towards a nursing degree as a nursing professional, or improving on time management by a certain time frame.

Many career goals for nurses include completing needed education, like residency in oncology, accepting a nursing position, completing nursing care training, getting a master’s degree or a master of science, completing critical care lessons, becoming a charge nurse or registered nurse, getting a BSN or bachelor of science, becoming a pediatric nurse or nursing profession in science in nursing. Nursing jobs have different nursing certifications, so you may need to use examples of smart goals to accomplish to reach the nursing goals you desire for your own career.

Many of these goals should be attainable to you, like becoming a nurse educator or nurse practitioner, so make sure you set professional goals for your own career path that align with your own mental health limits and needs. These nursing career goals can be both short-term goals and long-term goals. Some can focus on completing advanced degrees or advanced practice, like a bachelor’s degree, or they can be shorter to deal with competency and other time-bound needs.

1. Increase Knowledge

Carefully analyze what you have learned and hope to learn from your nursing classes. Choose your weakest subject area and create a goal around it. For example, if your knowledge of test results is weak, a goal might be "to increase my ability to correctly read urinalysis results." Employers want to know that you strive to improve your skills and will persevere in areas that you find difficult.

2. Patient Relationships

One of the most important parts of the healing process is a good attitude. If a doctor or nurse has poor bedside manner, it can prolong a patient's recovery. One goal for any nurse might be to "demonstrate consistently positive patient interactions." This will show employers that you are committed to positive involvements with your patients.

3. GPA

Future employers want to see that you have a working knowledge of the information you studied in nursing school. It's often not enough just to graduate. Set a goal for an acceptable and achievable grade point average. A GPA of 3.5 is acceptable, and should not be a problem to accomplish, provided you keep up with your courses.

4. Communication Skills

Much of a nurse's work consists of communicating clearly to her coworkers and patients. It is vital to understand what a doctor is asking you to do in an emergency situation. It is also important that you clearly convey to a patient the meaning of test results, the effects of medication, the doctor's orders and the importance of following any directions he might have been given. Creating a goal about improving and refining your communication skills will let employers know that you want to make sure that you are doing what you can to help patients heal, and to prevent any mistakes that could be made due to poor communication.