Nursing as a Business: Let the Entrepreneur Out

Perhaps every nurse dreams of working from home or starting their own nursing business at some point along the way. Many have done it and they haven’t had to abandon all their nursing skills and experience.

Tina at yourcareernursing.com advises you to start where every work at home business entrepreneur begins: planning. What is your purpose, what are your goals, are running from something or to something? Make sure you know the why before you delve into the what.  Do you want to spend more time with family? Do you want to avoid the commute? Are you looking for more income? Less stress? Think through the reasons and that will take you a long way toward narrowing down the possibilities of working for yourself.

Here are a few of the paths nurses have taken:

Start your own Wellness Coach practice

Keep in mind that coaching and nursing are not exactly the same thing. It is different to be the doer than the teacher. But everyone can learn to be a good listener. What? Did I say listener? I thought coaches were the talkers not the listeners! There is lesson number one. The most important skill for a coach is listening to their students and understanding their situation thoroughly so that they can make the best possible recommendations.

The second key skill is networking as the approach for marketing your services. Yes, that’s a second people and communication oriented activity that every coach and consultant will spend a great deal of time doing. In fact several of the nursing businesses mentioned in this article involve the same two skills.  That brings us to…

Nurse Trainer

Many nurses have put their extensive backgrounds to use by training other nurses in specialties like holistic nursing, foot care or diabetes. Again, networking is crucial to talk up your service whether you are doing one on one training, small group or large group events. The key here is to find a few people who are interested in learning and working your way up to bigger groups and venues as you understand what the needs of the market are.

Writer, Author, Editor

How about getting into the content business? This is something you can do part time before leaving your full time job. Volunteer to write for blogs and health publication in return for an author credit box that establishes your credibility as an expert in your field. Link back to your blog. Publish as often as possible. The more you write, the more you will be contacted by hungry publishers who are always looking for good content. You may be able to start charging a small fee for original work. Over time you can seek part and full time work as an editor or regular contributor.

Private In Home Care Giver

Many nurses just want to work for themselves on their own terms and their own schedule. Much health care delivery is shifting to in-home services. The great thing about this kind of work is that you may only need a small number of  clients to keep very busy. If you like the marketing and selling side of the business, you can stick to that and hire others to provide the services.