Nurse careers have grown in leaps and bounds. The beauty of having a career in nursing is that you have so much opportunity to choose from. Nurses can work in a variety of settings taking on a multitude of roles.

[Tweet “Don’t you just love being a nurse these days?”]

In my own almost decade long nursing career, I have worked in multiple settings doing an interesting variety of things. I started out as a psychiatric inpatient nurse at a large teaching hospital. I moved into the community where I ran a physician referral exercise program. Then I jumped back into the acute care setting, as a Clinical Nurse Research Fellow. These days, as a nurse entrepreneur, I enjoy writing about and speaking on Nursing from Within.

Boy, to look back over the course of what we have done can be a really fun and rewarding practice. What type of nurse have you been thus far and where are the interesting places you have worked?

While I have had lots of unique experiences, I do not claim to have all of the answers. That is why I asked the experts. I interviewed close to three dozen nurses over the course of the start of my business. I wanted to find out where and how they practiced nursing, what they loved about their roles, and how they maintained that thing called ‘work-life balance’ (even while working as a busy nurse).

I talked with school nurses, flight nurses, nurse educators and more. I interviewed holistic nurses, emergency department nurses and tons of other specialities. It was fascinating to learn about the passion each nurse brought to his or her unique role.

Sometimes you just have to learn from experience. If you are a nurse professional who is thinking that a career change may just be in store for you, but you are not 100% certain on the nursing career that will fit- then you may want to check out my book ‘Learning through Experience: An Inspirational Resource Booklet of Expert Interviews‘.

As a nurse blogger, author and speaker I get asked all of the time, “Elizabeth, how did you get where you are today? What would you recommend that I do?” My answer is always the same: “I cannot tell you what type of nursing career is right; you have to find that for yourself.”

But maybe having some ideas from the nurses in this book can help. Happy reading!

I would love to hear from you. What type of nurse are you? Where has your nursing career path taken you? What fun or interesting types of nursing have you practiced and which was your favorite nursing career?