Change Your Path

Change Your Path is a unique list of career alternatives for hospital bedside nurses. It includes the author's insights and anecdotes from over forty years of working in healthcare, twenty of which were in careers beyond the bedside. There is something for everyone in Sandra Nichols' selections which consist of actual jobs for RN's. She includes the job descriptions and requirements, salaries, and occupational outlooks for 75 nursing positions. At least half of the roles include...
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Change Your Path is a unique list of career alternatives for hospital bedside nurses. It includes the author's insights and anecdotes from over forty years of working in healthcare, twenty of which were in careers beyond the bedside. There is something for everyone in Sandra Nichols' selections which consist of actual jobs for RN's. She includes the job descriptions and requirements, salaries, and occupational outlooks for 75 nursing positions. At least half of the roles include Nichols' personal advice, opinions, and other relevant information based on her personal experience. Nichols encourages readers to recognize that, although "hospitals need nurses, not all nurses need to work in them" at the bedside. She inspires nurses to find the autonomy and working conditions that may be lacking in their current roles and to realize that they are deserving of work that is fulfilling. She asserts that nurses have more transferable skills than they may realize and demonstrates her own success in finding diverse alternatives as examples. She assures nurses that job dissatisfaction is often the necessary impetus for change and growth. Calling herself a "late bloomer" whose search spanned forty years, the author concludes that each career path meanders and provides the steps that lead us ultimately in the right direction and prepare us for our true calling.In "Change Your Path", the writer's intention is to provide hope and to encourage nurses to consider change whenever working conditions threaten their health or safety. In her introduction, she points out the fundamentally dichotomous philosophies of healthcare and nursing, suggesting that hospital nurses who may feel they have failed must consider the extent to which system-related factors contributed to their inability to practice the concepts they value. From her working experience at the managerial level of healthcare risk management, occupational health, and clinical education, Nichols provides information on the organizational and regulatory factors that influence the practice of nursing today, helping RN's to understand not only alternatives to bedside care, but the changes that have provided nursing opportunities beyond the bedside. She provides readers with a picture of future prospects for nurses in many areas including information technology, care coordination, integrative medicine, and education.Sandra Nichols is also the author of "INFP: A Flower in the Shade" and "Dead Mentors", a novel. Her work is about healing from various perspectives and her writing style is metaphorical. "Change Your Path" was prepared as a legacy at the end of her professional career, a parting message for nurses from one whose ambitions and interests led her to change paths many times. Nichols' nursing career diversity is testament to her message of hope. "Change Your Path" is intended as a message of healing and of hope for nurses whom Nichols holds in high esteem.