What it does it mean to be a Nurse Entrepreneur
Nurses represent approximately 80% of the healthcare workforce. You will find nurses in nearly every modality, acuity, and sector within healthcare. No healthcare provider as a group has a bigger footprint.
Therefore, you may conclude, nurses provide the greatest insights into patient perspectives, organizational policy, and highly technical procedural and monitoring equipment. In short, nurses are the healthcare experts.
So, how are nurses applying this expertise? In most cases nurses apply their expertise within the four walls of a healthcare facility. They go to work and deliver high quality, patient centric care on behalf of their employer – the healthcare facility. A career of employment with a healthcare facility does remain the most popular and primary path of most nurses. But, a growing alternative to the employment model is applying your expertise in an entrepreneurship.
Literally speaking Entrepreneur is a combination of two Latin words “entre”, to swim out (away from safety), and “prendes”, to grasp, understand, or capture. The term was popularized in the 1800s by a French economist named Jean-Baptiste Say. And entrepreneur became loosely defined as “an economic adventurer”.
Today it is primarily defined as a person who changes an existing order by introducing, new products, processes or services. You may not think of yourself as some sort of “economic adventurer” or influencer of “change”, but as previously mentioned, you are the expert. And, being knowledgeable and passionate regarding your profession is a fundamental characteristic of an entrepreneur.
Nurses tend to:
- Be motivated by achievement
- Set challenging goals
- Set out clear paths toward success
- Feel Less risk adverse
- Have a high tolerance for creativity and innovation
- Believe they are in control of their own destiny
All characteristics uniquely entrepreneurial and speak to the scope of potential of nurses. Therefore, it should be no surprise current trends show a rising number of nurses have been exchanging their expertise in unique entrepreneurial activities.
More and more nurses are drawing on their training and experience to start their own businesses. They have come to understand that they are uniquely equipped and positioned to guide innovations in process and product within healthcare. Nurse own businesses now engage in teaching, assist in product development, and provide many various healthcare related services. These entrepreneurial nurses have "swum out” away from the safety of their jobs to capture “change”.
Nurses are also discovering their entrepreneurial appetites can be satisfied in many ways. They do not necessarily have to adopt a strategy that involves quitting your job wholesale and becoming self-employed. It does not have to be an all or nothing endeavor. Some nurses do in fact leave their workplace entirely to take the leap of faith, but there are many more that will exchange their expertise part time as independent nurse contractors while maintaining their employment status.
These nurses choose to continue to build upon their knowledge and passion for their work in an employment model then apply those gains in outside clinical contract work. Bottom line, nurse entrepreneurs have the freedom to determine their own approach and work environments based on their schedules, interests and situations that they establish.
Nurse entrepreneurship offers many rewards.
- Nurse entrepreneurs control their own destiny.
- They afford themselves the ability to autonomously guide their vision and career.
- Entrepreneurship allows you to set challenging goals and offers a platform for creative expression and individual ideas to attain those goals.
- With the right plan, resolved execution, and a little luck may enjoy some financial freedom as well.
In conclusion, swim out! And take control of your career. It’s who you are!
