Writing Assignment 3: Career Development Plan
As I advance toward my goal of becoming a Family Nurse Practitioner, it becomes important to identify the specific career development activities and their related trajectories that will be important in ensuring that my professional life meets high standards of quality and achievement. To that end, this brief essay will examine my own plans and draw upon the professional literature to identify and assess the most viable career development strategies. Having elected to pursue specialization in family practice, it is clear that my primary focus is on acquiring the knowledge, skills, and competencies to work effectively within the context of the synergistic family unit.
To that end, I believe it is vital to devote a substantial amount of time and effort to the acquisition of a thorough grounding in the theory as well as the techniques of family nursing practice. Smith (2001), in a review of a new text by Jacqueline Fawcett titled Analysis and Evaluation of Contemporary Nursing Knowledge: Nursing Models and Theories, stated that it is her view that nursing models and theories are more important today than ever before. This is because the research and knowledge base underpinning nursing practice is becoming broader and deeper than ever before. As Smith (2001) noted, the benefits of this increase in knowledge are being enjoyed not by nurses, but by members of other professional disciplines in which theory as it applies to practice is more valued.
One of my on career development activities, therefore, will be to focus closely upon examining the nursing theory and research that impacts upon the role of the Family Nurse Practitioner. I recognize, as did Smith (2001), that these theory and knowledge bases are expanding at a rapid and even a dramatic rate. Part of this, I suspect, is due to the fact that technology advances are adding to the store of knowledge regarding ôbest pra...