Professional development is a concept for career-based nurses. In professional development, nurses take the steps necessary to advance their practice through education, volunteering, networking, attending seminars, and gaining credentials. Nurses should keep a portfolio to document their achievements to market themselves for professional organizations and jobs in professional development. Portfolios are a way of charting your progress and achievements in nursing. According to an article by Margaret Burns (2018), there are two different types of portfolios, one that showcases the nurse’s specific achievements and another that is broader than documents everything the nurse has accomplished. A specified portfolio of accomplishment is more conducive for job and professional organization applications, while the more common portfolio keeps track of the nurse’s clinical, educational, and volunteer experiences (p. 15).
For my undergraduate degree, a nursing portfolio was required to be completed before graduating. I constructed my portfolio on a website and included my background, current nursing position, future goals, and artifacts from each of my courses that people who reviewed my portfolio could read. I have used this portfolio during interviews, especially for travel nursing agencies, because it encompasses all of my time and experiences as a nurse.
Travel Nursing Experience
My first strategy for building a sound portfolio is to document my experience as a nurse. To do this, I have joined a travel nursing agency to become a temporary nurse at different facilities. I have a background in medical-surgical, intermediate, and critical care nursing so that I can float between these three disciplines at various facilities. This will help articulate my vast experience as a nurse when I become a nurse practitioner and apply for a job. Each hospital organization is set up differently, so I will learn their competencies, nursing workflow, and different management styles of disease processes. In future practice, I will be able to use these skills when I manage a patient’s plan of care. An article by Jan Daubener (2001) provides anecdotes from different travel nurses to explain the pros and cons of the career field. One account from a nurse demonstrated their increased competency and comfort level managing critical drips and ventilators in an ICU that differed from their home unit. As such, the nurse was adaptable and learned the processes at the new hospital he traveled to and was successful. As a result, he gained more experience and comfort level handling a different management style and could use this knowledge in future travel contracts. Traveling to new agencies means that I will have to be comfortable with not knowing everything and adapt quickly to new situations. This measurement of self-assessment relates to a critical aspect of nursing portfolio development.
In an article by Casey and Egan (2010):
Evidence used within the portfolio can be used to undertake a personal review of where a practitioner currently is in terms of their development and consider where they want to be. A SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis can be a simple but useful tool to analyze professional strengths, skills, knowledge, and ability) and weaknesses (areas for development.) These can then be considered in the context of the opportunities for development and the potential threats or barriers to development (p. 550).
Travel nursing will require me to constantly assess my current knowledge and experience level, narrow down what I need to improve, and then reflect on what I have learned. This skill will be used constantly in my future practice as a nurse practitioner.
Professional Certifications
My next strategy for constructing a solid portfolio of my nursing practice is to gain credentials or competencies in my chosen practice area. Currently, I am pursuing a specialization in acute care practice for adults and geriatrics. My eventual goal is to work as a nurse practitioner in endocrinology and diabetes management. One specific nursing credential I am actively trying to achieve is certified diabetes educator (CDE). This is awarded to nurses who have the required amount of hours managing and counseling patients on diabetes and successfully passing the proctored exam. If I have this credential, it will represent my interest and passion for diabetes management and supply me with the knowledge necessary to make critical decisions when managing this disease. According to an article presented on the
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