26 Feb 2019 ● Chloe, Registered Mental Health Nurse
A guide to your Continuing Professional Development CPD as a Nurse - moving on and up!
RMN Chloe gives us the lowdown on your CPD. What options are available? What areas can you aim to get into? This can be applied to any area within nursing, so keep on reading!
Everyone's CPD will be different based on what they want out of their career. However, this blog post will help you on your way with managing your own CPD.As a RMN nurse registered with the NMC, you are obligated to undertake Continuing Professional Development to keep your registration and therefore practice as a nurse.
No matter what phase of your career you're in - whether you're not qualified yet or even if you've been qualified for over 10 years - your CPD is something you should always bear in mind.
Read how to become a mental health nurse RMN before reading this, if you are not yet qualified/newly qualified.
Study options
You must complete 5 days of study every 3 years and there's all kinds of ways you can meet this modest requirement.
If you don't have time to attend proper courses, you can take part in distance learning or e-learning courses.
If you do have time, try local universities for part-time courses in your area. Your place of work may also organise training days for the team or you may choose to attend something like a prescribing forum.
To find out what it's like to study mental health, read Chloe's blog - qualified RMN Chloe answers your questions about studying mental health nursing.
No goal is too small or far-fetched
The areas in which CPD can be taken are diverse, too.
If you want to go into research, you may well want to go back to university for further study; if you want to get into health care management, then again university can be a good bet.
Websites for organisations like the Royal College of Nursing and British Medical Journal have online CPD modules to increase your practical knowledge surrounding specific illnesses, diseases or disorders and the management thereof.
Typical nursing job paths
Once you've graduated, you'll undertake a probationary period where you are supported to gather the requisite skills.
Then, having worked as a staff nurse for some years, you have the option to move to team leader/deputy ward manager.
After this, there are many, many options for nurses and plenty in RMN nursing jobs alone.
The NHS divides your options into clinical, management, education and research – that is, staying within a health care organisation to provide front-line care, facilitating the provision of health care, training the new crop of nurses or increasing our understanding of how to approach and treat different issues.
If you want to follow the clinical path, you'll need to return to university for postgraduate work which will allow you to become a nurse practitioner and then nurse consultant.
Alternatively, you may specialise in an area like district nursing, practice nurse or sexual health nurse.
If you want to work in education, you'll teach for a while and eventually work your way to course design and deliverance alongside achieving a Ph.D.
Similarly, nursing management will involve qualifications and experience in managing teams up to leading teams of professionals, policy and strategy development or facilitating systems that support others to carry out the aims of the team.
