NURS 4516 Winter 2019: Advanced Professional Issues Career Plan

This document presents a comprehensive career plan assignment for NURS 4516, focusing on advanced professional issues. The assignment is divided into two parts: Part One involves environmental scanning, self-assessment, identifying interests, and defining a career vision. It explores global and local health issues, personal values, strengths, and limitations. Part Two outlines action steps, resources, timelines, and indicators of success for achieving both short-term and long-term career goals. The student aims to develop time management, leadership traits, and effective communication skills. The assignment also includes references and strategies for marketing oneself in the nursing field.

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NURS 4516: Advanced Professional Issues
Career Plan Template
Winter 2019
Name:
CAREER PLAN ASSIGNMENT: PART ONE
a. Scanning Your Environment:
What health/social issues seem to be worldwide
phenomena?
• What are the nursing issues that seem to be global in their
scope?
In the present generation, life expectancy of people had
increased. Many people are living longer lives. However the
quality of lives have not developed as older cohorts are suffering
from co-morbid disorders. Their numbers are increasing at an
alarming rate that had put huge pressures on nurses to handle
the situation (Fehlings et al., 2015). Handling such number of
patients with complex disorders have become challenging for
them.
• What are the health and social trends in your
Country?
Social determinants of health had become the main concerns that
the government needs to take in consideration. Studies opine

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that poor education, poor employment opportunities, addiction,
inaccessibility to healthcare centers, socioeconomic status,
transport, food and others all determine the health conditions of
individuals. The government presently considers such trends to
be important and policies are gradually developed to handle such
determinants of health successfully
• What are the issues affecting nurses in your
country?
Nursing shortage has huge impacts on nurses as well. Demand of
meeting the needs and expectations of huge number of patients
with low nurse patient ratio becomes challenging for them. When
lesser number of nurses has to handle more number of patients,
they become burned out. Besides, bullying behaviours from
seniors is another issue faced by nurses that affect their morale.
Fatigue, stress, anxiety as well as physical health issues like
headache, spondilytis, muscle stiffness, back pain, digestive
disorders are common due to burnouts. Work-life balances are
getting affected and hence job satisfaction is also affected
• What are some of the important social and
health issues in your local area?

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People belonging to low socio-economic status cannot enjoy
equal healthcare benefits like that of people with high socio-
economic status. Although, government of Canada promotes
health equity and equality in healthcare services, it had not been
met successfully in my local area.
• What are the important nursing issues in your
local area?
The number of patients visiting the primary healthcare centers is
quite higher than the number of nurses who can manage them
and care for them successfully. There are long waiting times and
patients often get agitated. Moreover, nurses also cannot
allocate sufficient time to each patient that affects patient
satisfaction.
• Where are the gaps between patient/consumer
needs and services provided?
Another issue is that the nursing professionals are not culturally
competent to handle patients from diverse cultural backgrounds
and hence the patients are not being able to get culturally
competent care from them (Govere & Govere, 2016). The gap of
cultural traditions, preferences and inhibitions between patients
and nurses are sometime not being realised and handled
effectively by patients. This affects the dignity and autonomy of
patients.

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Self-Assessment
Values:
• What is important to me in my work and in my
personal life?
I believe that I need to develop time-management skills, self-
regulation and resilience in both my personal and professional
lives.
• Who or what do I need to consider in my life at
this time?
I need to prepare myself with adequate skills and knowledge that
would ensure not only clinical expertise in the care I provide but
also ensure sufficient non-pharmacological knowledge and skills.
This would help me in developing therapeutic relationships with
my patients that is important to ensure patient satisfaction.
Therefore, at this point of life, I should dedicate myself to
develop all such skills through workshops and training sessions.
• What are my priorities—self, family, community
or other?
My present priority is self and community.
• What knowledge and skills have I developed, personally and
professionally?

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I have already developed effective communication skills and
cultural competency skills, cultural sensitiveness. I also have
good command over clinical knowledge required for community
care nursing. However, I need to develop self-regulation,
resilience and time management skills.
• What are my strengths?
My strengths are my socialising skills, communication skills,
empathy, cultural sensitivity.
• What are my limitations?
My limitations are time management skills, lack of self-
regulation, lack of resilience
• What knowledge and skills require further development?
I need to develop more knowledge and skills on handling
healthcare technologies like Electronic Health records. Moreover,
I also have to develop my skills of handling ethical dilemmas
through development of attribute of critical thinking.
Interests:
• What have you liked about your past and current
job(s)?
I liked the organisational culture, which influenced effective
teamwork. Every member were comfortable with each other and
always helped each other in times of need. Every one provided
constructive feedback that helped to tackle difficult situation.

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• What haven’t you liked?
I did not like the human resource policies as they have very few
leaves, poor training opportunities and restricted career growths.
The higher authorities never put importance to issues faced by
employees.
What kind of environment brings out the best in
you?
A collaborative working environment and constructive feedbacks
from leaders bring out the best out of me.
• What do you like to do outside of the workplace?
I like to watch comedy films to relax myself.
• What energises or motivates you?
Positive feedbacks and rewards with good career growth opportunities
energises me.
b. Reality Check
• What feedback have I received about my achievements from
colleagues, friends, and family?
Positive feedbacks about my enthusiasm, good communication skills and
empathy from them motivated me. However, some felt that I needed to
less dominant in nature.
• What did they identify as my strengths and limitations?
My strengths were my social skills, empathy and good communication
skills. They identified that I need to be more proactive in critically thinking

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before making decisions and not jump to conclusions without judging the
outcomes properly
• What three adjectives would they use to describe me, both in and
outside my workplace and why?
Friendly as I had good social and communication skills
Fidgety and nervous in strenuous situations
Empathetic as I care for all and understand everyone’s issues by putting
myself in their position
• How did my assessment of accomplishments compare with others’
assessments?
I believe that they are correct to some extent
c. Career Vision
• What do I want? What am I seeking?
I want to be an expert nurse, serving humankind and having aspirations
for being a nurse leader in future
• What does my ideal day look like? What am I doing, where am I doing it,
and who is there with me?
Ideal day means waking up, mediating, having breakfast with family,
going work, fulfilling my duty as healthcare team members, satisfying
patients, returning home in time, having proper work life balance, resting
and enjoying movies with family, having dinner, sleeping and then a new
day

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• Is someone currently doing the kind of work I’d like to do? Describe the
characteristics of that work.
My aunt is a nurse leader and I am inspired from her. She leads not only
15 novice nurses but also maintain the flow of work in the oncology
wards.
• What are the self-limiting beliefs that could prevent me from doing
what I really want to do?
I have no self-limiting beliefs
• What are the environmental constraints that I must consider before I
can do what I really want to do?
 I am from a different cultural background to that of the majority of
patients and hence, I need to well-prepared to handle them
 My love for socialising might make me distracted and hence I need
to be careful
d. Career Goals
i. Short Term
Develop time management, self-regulation and resilience
ii. Long Term
Develop effective leadership traits to lead nursing professionals
e. References

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Fehlings, M. G., Tetreault, L., Nater, A., Choma, T., Harrop, J., Mroz, T., ... & Smith, J. S.
(2015). The aging of the global population: the changing epidemiology of disease and
spinal disorders. Neurosurgery, vol: 77 no:(suppl_1), pp: S1-S5.
https://doi.org/10.1227/NEU.0000000000000953
Govere, L., & Govere, E. M. (2016). How effective is cultural competence training of healthcare
providers on improving patient satisfaction of minority groups? A systematic review of
literature. Worldviews on Evidence‐Based Nursing, vol :13 no.(6), pp: 402-410.
https://doi.org/10.1111/wvn.12176
CAREER PLAN ASSIGNMENT: PART TWO
a. Action Steps
 Develop time management plans like scheduling my activities in
diaries allocating timeframe for each, setting rewards for myself
 Participate in mindfulness based therapies, yoga, meditation
 Interview nurse leaders and learn from their experiences
 Maintaining Reflection journals
 Following evidence based studies
b. Resources
 Access to digital library
 Workshops

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 Internet websites
c. Timeline (be specific to when it will be accomplished)
Short-term goals within 4 months
Long-term goals within 2 to 3 years
d. Indicators of Success (how will I know I have succeeded?)
 Personal reflection
 Feedback from mentors
 Feedback from colleagues
 Performance indicators
e. Next Steps (how will I market myself?)
 Through effective communication skills
 Dropping my resume
 Exhibiting my skills through work achievements
 Connecting through social media accounts