If you’ve been following along now for a while, you’ll know that I’ve spent many moments over the last five years of my nursing career standing in front of a door I can’t quite seem to open. The door’s name is ‘Nurse Practitioner’ and you can read a little more about this stubborn door here.
For despite my best efforts, my determination, and two well-researched 32-paged applications for candidate suggestion – this door has remained closed to me. It’s been the first time in my nursing career where the next step hasn’t simply fallen into place, and it’s not that I haven’t worked hard to achieve my stepping stones up until this point, it’s just that my hard work has never not paid off before. My investment in my career – albeit, a little overeager at times – has always reaped return. So here I am, somewhat perplexed at how the [un]simple opening of this door alludes me so violently.
I also still cannot fathom how ‘finding your job’ could possibly be a prerequisite to somebody studying the degree for the job in the first place – but alas, it’s a strange world we live in and I’m just trying my best to follow the rules without dramatically shouting absurdities on my knees at the foot of a university such as, “Why won’t you just let me study?” (said absolutely no one ever, except me, I’m sure).
The reality is I’ve been searching for a way to open this door for a long time now.
When I was given the opportunity to act as Clinical Nurse Consultant (CNC) on a repeating secondment a couple of years ago, this was almost like being given a peek at what lay behind this door. But while I continue to pick up this role on frequent occasion, I fear it’s never really found me the ability to open this door for good. I’ve been able to sink my teeth into a different side of nursing in which I’ve really loved. And I’ve had the opportunity to speak with many a people who would prove to be instrumental in my progression to a Nurse Practitioner (NP), but without the buy in from the health service itself, this means almost nothing.
I’ve spent hours wondering outside of the box (or NP pathway application, if you will) about how else I could find myself a key to this door. I’ve set myself on an emotional rollercoaster more than once, following potential leads and getting excited – to more-or-less find myself back at the same doormat, knocking furiously without an answer.
Then, around Easter this year, something started falling together.
It was but a mere conversation between our established Urology NP and a member of the nursing executive team on a floor walk-around to hand out Easter eggs (for the surgical ‘Eggs-cellence Awards’… if you gagged reading that, never fear – so did I my friend. Another blissful health service attempt at gaining a following by capitalising on our competitive streak…but I digress). In this conversation, the Urology NP was asked by our EDNM that if the pie was in the sky, what did this look like for her.
She had harnessed this opportunity to paint a vivid picture of success that encompassed not only one other NP to support her advantageous workload, but also a NP candidate that could be trained on the job whilst they completed their degree, eventually to become the third Urology NP for the service (and forth Urology NP in the state).
Never thinking this could ever be considered as a financially sustainable suggestion for a service wildly in debt, it was a complete surprise when less than two-months later not only had one NP job been approved for recruitment, but a second as a NP candidate had also been approved. And when an email with the link to the job advertisement landed in my inbox, I couldn’t help but let myself hope that maybe this was the key I’d been waiting for.
Essentially what this mean is, that if i were successful in getting the candidate role, I would eliminate the requirement to firstly propose a NP position via the tedious 32-page candidate application, and would be able to study my Masters with no encumbrance by whether the health service wished to honour the position at the completion of my degree or not. I would not have to apply for the aforementioned created role at the end of my degree, nor bear the risk of someone else taking the role from me at the finish line. And at the risk of sounding too good to be true, I would be paid as a NP candidate throughout my studies as I worked in the role in an ‘apprenticeship’ style, gaining on-hands learning as I went.
Now when I say that the terms outlaid in that paragraph are unheard of – I mean, they are seriously ‘pie in the sky’ statements. There has never been an opportunity like this as long as NP roles have existed. It has always been Hunger Games to get into NP, so I still can’t fathom that this opportunity found its way to my inbox, or that I’ve even had the chance to apply for it.
As expected, I spent at least a good week before I applied seriously wrestling my own self-doubt on whether I would make a good applicant. Trust me to get stage-fright the moment it comes time to apply for a one-in-a-lifetime opportunity and renegotiate my own attributes to mean less than they do. With a few more gentle pushes from Z and my Dad (and an email from my nursing director in earnest of my application), I finally hit the ‘Apply’ button and submitted my application.
While I wait to hear the outcome of the recruitment, I sit with equal parts anxiety worrying that I’ve only come so close to miss out, and excitement at the prospect of finally reaching such a huge career goal of mine. I flux in and out of both sentiments, desperately hoping for the latter and for finally gaining the ability to open this door.
I know that no matter which way this opportunity lands me, I will open the NP door. An investment in your own growth is never poorly placed, just sometimes it can take a little longer to see the return – like a stock market. And I’m adamant that this door won’t remain stuck forever, nor that these stocks won’t prove plentiful one day.
And in the meantime, I’ll keep knocking.
d x
Life, She Wrote. 