Career Opps With The Most Popular Online Masters Degrees In Nursing

Some nurses know exactly what their long term career goal is before even taking a single college course, and go all the way through the associates, bachelors and masters degree studies in nursing with a relatively limited amount of clinical work. But it’s far more common for a nurse to develop his or her schooling and work experience together, studying for a BSN and then a master’s degree while holding down a full-time job.

If you’re like most nurses considering a master’s degree, you’re probably looking to boost your potential earnings and accomplish at least one of these goals:

• Practice in a more cutting-edge nursing specialty like informatics.
• Move into an administrative position in a hospital or other facility and reduce your “hands on” nursing tasks.
• Gain business skills that will allow you to move out of nursing completely into a new role at an insurance company, healthcare system or other organization where your nursing knowledge makes you a more effective manager.

But to qualify for vast majority of nursing master’s degree programs, you need to have a bachelor’s degree in nursing already completed, and be in possession of an unencumbered RN license. If you have your eye on a particular job goal, you can pursue a masters in nursing management, informatics or other specialty. Alternatively, you can get a generalized master’s in nursing, and then get a post master’s certificate later on that will qualify you in a specialty. A specialized masters will generally offer faster entry into a specialty, but the more general degree will tend to qualify you for a wider range of career options.

Online Nursing Master’s
Here are some of the most popular senior-level nursing careers, and the types of online master’s degree programs that are available to qualify you for them:

Nursing Administrator in a hospital or other health care setting
Administrators generally oversee and manage a staff of nurses, making sure that all shifts are covered and that the correct procedures are followed. An important role of a nurse administrator is to mentor and develop the skills of young nurses, and help them deal with the emotional challenges and ethics issues that can arise in nursing. The degrees that tends to lead to this type of position go under the titles of General Masters in Nursing (MSN), MSN Nurse Educator, MSN Nurse Educator or MSN in Leadership and Management.

Nurse Educator or Nursing Professor
This career path would involve creating plans for how nurses are educated and trained in a hospital or other health care facility, or becoming a professor in a college of nursing. Key areas of knowledge needed include curriculum development, assessment and evaluation of nurses, students and administrators involved in training nurses and instructional strategies. This can also involve formulating policies for an organization, innovative teaching methods, research skills and using technology in teaching. Masters programs that lead to this type of career include MSN Healthcare Education, MSN Nurse Education, MSN Clinical Nurse Leadership or MSN in Contemporary Nursing Faculty. (Click for more info on a masters in nursing education)

Nursing Informatics Specialist
Professionals in this area tend to focus on the technology systems involved in patient care, and how effectively they are being used to collect and distribute important information. That could involve reorganizing the computer system nurses are using in a hospital, designing programs that teach nurses how to use technology or helping to manage the upkeep of the tech systems at a facility. This is not, however, IT or "code developer" type work. Informatics specialists bring their clinical knowledge of nursing to tech projects to make sure they are designed to manage the information involved in real patient care and diagnosis effectively. It's a field that should offer good long term career options, because health care has become highly dependent on technology, but most nurses have limited understanding of computer systems. Master's degrees in this area normally go the heading of Informatics or Nursing Informatics.