Introduction
Welcome to “It’s Your Career: Take Charge!” Whether you’re a first-year nursing student, a returning post-diploma student, or you’re working on your Master of Nursing, this program is for you. Investing time to reflect on your professional dreams and goals will help shape the way you engage with your nursing program and your progress towards your unique personal career goals.
This online program guides you through a Career Planning and Development process that will help you envision your ideal career. You’ll discover who and what can help you assess your strengths— both within and outside your nursing program. You’ll discover how you can shape your program to further your development in areas of particular meaning and importance to you. And, you’ll learn how to market yourself, both within your nursing program, school, academic setting and practicum placements. Finally, you’ll learn how to create a concrete career plan, which you’ll be able to use to realize your vision.
The Donner and Wheeler (donnerwheeler) Career Planning and Development Model that we use in this program provides a guide to help you create a vision of your career that is uniquely yours. It helps you assess your strengths and identify areas for development in relation to your vision. It teaches you to scan — to discover who and what can help in those areas you’d like to develop. And, it assists you with your career plan, with marketing yourself both within and outside your academic program.
The program is organized into two sections: a video module and a resource repository.
Video module
This section of the program provides an introduction to career planning and development and includes six videos, each of which aligns with the phases of the donnerwheeler Career Planning and Development Model.
You might first like to review the videos in sequence from start to finish. Then, go back to the beginning and complete each video before you go on to the next. After this first complete run through you can review the video(s) in any order based on what you want to focus on in your career planning and development. Each video will take fewer than 10 minutes to complete.
Resource repository
This section of the program provides a range of career planning and development resources tailored to both undergraduate and graduate nursing students.
The repository includes 6 modules in total. Each of the first 4 modules is dedicated to resources tailored to undergraduate students in each of the four years of their program. The 5th module is customized to students in Post-Diploma Programs (RN-BScN or RPN-BScN) and the 6th module is focused on Master of Nursing students.
Each module in the repository includes the following activities:
- Presentation of the “It’s Your Career: Take Charge” donnerwheeler Career Planning and Development Model, adapted to the specific nursing education program and student cohort [Powerpoint file]
- Example of a cover letter for each student cohort [Word file]
- Example of a resume for each student cohort [Word file]
- Videotaped career conversation with individual students who represent the specific program (e.g. each year of the undergraduate BScN program, a post-diploma student and a master of nursing student respectively)
- Program/year specific worksheet for students to use as they work through each module of the program. [Word file]
All activities (excluding the career conversation videos) are available for you to download and edit, so you can work on them at your leisure. Do hold onto them, as you’ll likely want to revise your work as you develop over time. The activities can be completed in under 10 minutes or they can take much longer. It depends on how much thinking and reflection you need or want to do.
As you work through the activities:
- think about each question and its relevance to you at each stage of your nursing education
- answer the questions as honestly as you can, keeping in mind that the answers are for your eyes only.
- pace yourself: set a schedule and stick to it.
- work with a student colleague, faculty mentor, a group of friends or a career coach if you need help with your schedule
All the best!
Whether you’re a student in the early years of your undergraduate degree, almost at the end of your studies, or engaging in graduate work, this program will invite you to reflect on you academic experiences, and shape them on an ongoing basis. You’ll be moving towards achieving your career goals each step of the way.