How Nurses Can Be More Confident

You can work very hard as a nurse, and you can gain a lot of experience, but if you’re not confident, it’s going to be hard to put all that hard work, knowledge, and experience to good use. You’ll always hold back a little and you’ll always be unsure of yourself. Not only does this make your job a lot harder than it needs to be, but you’ll also find that you aren’t helping your patients – or even your colleagues – as much as you might otherwise be able to do. With that in mind, it’s a good idea to build your confidence as a nurse. Read on for some ideas on how to do just that.

Be Prepared

One of the best ways to be more confident when you are a nurse is to be prepared. The more you can prepare for your shift, the more confident you will be that there is nothing to worry about. Although nursing is a job in which the unexpected happens a lot of the time – after all, you never know who you are going to treat, what their injuries or illness might be, or even what the outcome will be – if you can be prepared in terms of yourself (having a snack and water with you, ensuring you have breakfast, sleeping well, and so on), that will help.

What will also help is if you anticipate the worst. It might sound very negative, but the reality is that a nurse’s job is hard, and sometimes you will have negative things to deal with. If you anticipate the worst, you’ll be prepared (and therefore more confident) should it happen, and you’ll be happy if it doesn’t. Either way, you can do a good job.

Don’t Stop Learning

As mentioned above, the more knowledge and experience you have, the more confident you will be in your abilities to do your job and do it well. Experience is something you can only gain by working, of course, and you will pick up a good amount of knowledge this way too, but the best way to have more knowledge is to keep learning more formally.

There are online courses you can take that will enhance your knowledge, give you a recognized qualification, and, because they can be done on a part-time basis and made to fit in with your schedule, you won’t have to sacrifice your career growth to achieve your new knowledge. Look at what the UIndy FNP DNP program can offer as a prime example.

Strengthen Your Weaknesses

One of the reasons for a lack of confidence in yourself is that you know you are weak in some areas, so when you think that you might have to do something that incorporates those skills, you hold back or automatically assume you’ll fail.

If that is the case, make sure you consciously know what those weaknesses are. When you do, you can work towards strengthening them specifically. Therefore, you will be able to bring all your skills to the same excellent level, and you’ll get much more confident knowing that you can do anything that is asked of you in terms of patient care and even nursing leadership if that’s something you want to get more involved with.