Nurses have a couple of options when it comes to securing leadership positions. The most organic route is to log time in the trenches.
Work hard and for many years demonstrating not just your exceptional quality as a bedside nurse, but also the personal brand of leadership you bring to the floor. This path will (with maybe a little luck stirred in) bring you to the life of a charge nurse.
Basically shift leaders who split their time between the patient side and administrative work. The other route? Graduate school. What do these routes have in common? They aren’t very expedient. Nor are they extremely easy for people already working.
Can you climb your hospital’s organizational chart without sacrificing work-life balance?
Becoming a Charge Nurse While Maintaining Work-Life Balance
Short Answer: Yes, you can become a charge nurse without sacrificing work-life balance. That said, that will take both planning and organization. Probably it begins with a statement: “I would like to become a charge nurse.” Then the question: “What do I have to do to make that happen?”
You’ll be directing these comments to your employer. It’s possible the hospital will already have programs in place for filtering qualified nurses into leadership roles. Not everyone wants to be a nursing leader. Just putting yourself out there will be enough to generate some interest–even if you have to wow them with your work as well.
This might involve taking on some more work–possibly the completion of a specialized certification program–but the majority of what you accomplish will most likely be done during normal working hours. The requirements that fall outside your typical schedule might interfere with your work-life balance temporarily. Ultimately, however, the impact will be short-term.
The Graduate School Route to Nursing Leadership
The slightly more compromised route. It is, of course, possible to use graduate school as a way of accelerating your path to nursing leadership–or steering it in an even more ambitious direction.
Through a master’s program, you will be able to pursue administrative positions that could take you as far as the C-Suite depending on how ambitious you get with it. This could compromise your work-life balance in the short term.
Graduate programs will generally allow you to pick off classes at your own rate. Even just one a semester if that’s what you have the bandwidth for. That will push your degree completion timeline pretty far back, but if you’re not in a rush that will certainly help minimize stress.
No matter how slowly you go after the degree, however, you are still compromising at least some work-life balance.
That sacrifice could extend to the long term as well. While administrative roles aren’t harder than bedside nursing–is anything?–they might require more hours. Certainly, they may come at the cost of some scheduling flexibility. Many nurses are able to have a lot of say in when they work. Administrators tend to have a more standardized schedule.
The Rewards of Nursing Leadership
What are the rewards of nursing leadership? One benefit may be monetary. Nursing leaders generally make at least a little more. Charge nurses often command a base salary of $95,000 per year. That’s definitely nothing to sneeze at. Administrators can make even more money.
The other benefit is that you’ll have more influence on your hospital. Consequently, a greater impact on how your entire community receives healthcare.
Ultimately, money isn’t a strong enough motivation to justify a career in healthcare. Yes, the pay is competitive. No, being a nurse is not the easiest way to make six figures.
If your career as a leader is going to work, it’s going to be rooted in a deeper desire. Nursing leaders drive policy changes that improve patient outcomes. They mentor new generations of nurses. They champion evidence-based practices that transform care delivery.
Leadership positions also offer professional growth, intellectual challenges, and the satisfaction of solving complex healthcare problems. Many nurse leaders report higher job satisfaction from seeing their vision implemented across departments or facilities.
You’ve got to want to be–excuse this corny phrase—a part of something bigger than yourself. It’s that desire that sees you through the hardest parts of the job.
Other Ways to Be a Nursing Leader
You can also go to graduate school to become an advanced practice nurse. Advanced Practice Nurses aren’t exactly professionally superior to RNs. In the same way becoming a principal is not exactly a promotion for a teacher, but rather an adjacent career path, becoming a nurse practitioner is ultimately a completely different job–with significant overlap.
Advanced practice nurses experience leadership through increased responsibility. They are allowed to do more with less supervision. Sometimes, state law allows for such little supervision that they are able to open their own practice and participate in their local healthcare community as a true leader.
In all cases, they have the autonomy to zero in on exactly what aspect of the job interests them the most and direct their energy toward that. In terms of short-term life balance, the compromise will be what you make it.
Often it is beneficial to complete the program in the quickest and most sensible timeline possible for you.
This is both a way of maintaining momentum and increasing your salary as quickly as possible. NPs can make up to twice what RNs earn which means the sooner you get your degree the sooner you will begin building wealth. Again, not enough of a motivation to drive a healthcare career. Maybe enough of a motivation to complete a 2-3 year master’s program on time?
The Path to Nursing Leadership
Ambition can be scary and uncomfortable. All of a sudden you want something new. And though you live the same life you did before, all of a sudden you have a hollow aching that both troubles and consumes the mind. In other words, you want to be a nursing leader but now it’s another thing you’re stressed about.
That’s fair enough. The path will have challenges no matter how much you tailor it to your needs. But while your work-life balance may become temporarily off-kilter, your overall experience doesn’t need to be bad. Short-term pains for long-term gains.
Remember also that the deck is stacked in your favor. Nurses remain in extraordinarily high demand. Hospitals have a consistent need for great RNs at every stage in their careers. It’s a seller’s market, so go after it.
Disclosure: collaborative post
Thank you for reading – if you enjoyed this content, please consider buying me a coffee here
or browse my Amazon wishlist
I really appreciate your support and it helps to keep the site running and for my time 🙂
