Preparing a Strategic Career Plan

Graduation and certification are the beginning of your career as an NP. Whether you are looking for that dream job or you have decided to open your own practice as an independent NP, you need a plan to get there. Before the Web and social media, job hunting was relatively simple. Job hunters perused the classifieds, made cold calls, and many times just showed up with a resume in hand. There has been a dramatic change in the last decade in how people find and get jobs, and NPs are no exception. For those seeking employment now, there is a wealth of resources available from mega employment Web sites to specialty blogs. Finding a job as an NP may not be a big challenge, but landing the position that you have passionately prepared for and pursued is going to take some work. A well-crafted cover letter and resume may be necessary items, but it may not be enough to get you exactly where you want to be. With so many opportunities and career trajectories available to NPs today, you need to focus and get serious about what you want to do and where you want to do it.

Directions

In this Assignment, you will develop your own strategic career plan for starting your new career as an NP. There are sequential steps that need to be accomplished. Use the following template to design your career plan. You do not need to include references. This is a plan that you may layout how you wish. There are no right or wrong answers in this plan.

It is time to take inventory and ask yourself some questions. What is your career vision? Be specific and honest. Where do you want to work? What are your short term and long term goals (give timeline). What are the most important things you are looking for? Do you want to independently own a clinic? Perhaps you have a niche such as managing chronic diseases in patients over 65 years old. Or, your aspirations may be more concrete such as salary and benefits.
Next, describe your ideal work situation. Is it a rural clinic or major trauma center? Who do you want to work with? Who is your target patient population? What schedule do you want? What are the priorities in your career right now? How about 5 years from now?
How do you plan on researching opportunities (whether looking for employment or independent practice site)? List several methods such as job fairs, the Web, and medical employment agencies.
Discuss your networking ideas. Networking is essential today. Are you in Linkedin?
If all goes right, how will you prepare for the interview? This is sometimes the make it or break it step. Be specific here on how you plan on acing this step.
If you want to start your own practice, describe what your practice will be? How you will market this business? How will you obtain funding? What do you need to do before opening the doors? Briefly, what is your business plan?
To view the Grading Rubric for this Assignment, please visit the Grading Rubrics section of the Course Home.

Assignment Requirements

Before finalizing your work, you should:

be sure to read the Assignment description carefully (as displayed above)
consult the Grading Rubric (under the Course Home) to make sure you have included everything necessary
utilize spelling and grammar check to minimize errors
Your writing Assignment should:

follow the conventions of Standard American English (correct grammar, punctuation, etc.)
be well ordered, logical, and unified, as well as original and insightful
display superior content, organization, style, and mechanics
use APA 6th Edition format for organization, style, and crediting sources. Refer to the APA Progression Ladder.
THE RESOURCES USED MUST BE NO OLDER THAN 4 YEARS. USE HE STATE OF ALABAMA!!!!!! FOLOW THE PROVIDED RUBRIC EXACTLY!!!!!

You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.

Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.

Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.

The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.

 

ADDITIONAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE CLASS

Discussion Questions (DQ)

Initial responses to the DQ should address all components of the questions asked, include a minimum of one scholarly source, and be at least 250 words.
Successful responses are substantive (i.e., add something new to the discussion, engage others in the discussion, well-developed idea) and include at least one scholarly source.
One or two sentence responses, simple statements of agreement or “good post,” and responses that are off-topic will not count as substantive. Substantive responses should be at least 150 words.
I encourage you to incorporate the readings from the week (as applicable) into your responses.
Weekly Participation

Your initial responses to the mandatory DQ do not count toward participation and are graded separately.
In addition to the DQ responses, you must post at least one reply to peers (or me) on three separate days, for a total of three replies.
Participation posts do not require a scholarly source/citation (unless you cite someone else’s work).
Part of your weekly participation includes viewing the weekly announcement and attesting to watching it in the comments. These announcements are made to ensure you understand everything that is due during the week.
APA Format and Writing Quality

Familiarize yourself with APA format and practice using it correctly. It is used for most writing assignments for your degree. Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for APA paper templates, citation examples, tips, etc. Points will be deducted for poor use of APA format or absence of APA format (if required).
Cite all sources of information! When in doubt, cite the source. Paraphrasing also requires a citation.
I highly recommend using the APA Publication Manual, 6th edition.
Use of Direct Quotes

I discourage overutilization of direct quotes in DQs and assignments at the Masters’ level and deduct points accordingly.
As Masters’ level students, it is important that you be able to critically analyze and interpret information from journal articles and other resources. Simply restating someone else’s words does not demonstrate an understanding of the content or critical analysis of the content.
It is best to paraphrase content and cite your source.
LopesWrite Policy

For assignments that need to be submitted to LopesWrite, please be sure you have received your report and Similarity Index (SI) percentage BEFORE you do a “final submit” to me.
Once you have received your report, please review it. This report will show you grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors that can easily be fixed. Take the extra few minutes to review instead of getting counted off for these mistakes.
Review your similarities. Did you forget to cite something? Did you not paraphrase well enough? Is your paper made up of someone else’s thoughts more than your own?
Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for tips on improving your paper and SI score.
Late Policy

The university’s policy on late assignments is 10% penalty PER DAY LATE. This also applies to late DQ replies.
Please communicate with me if you anticipate having to submit an assignment late. I am happy to be flexible, with advance notice. We may be able to work out an extension based on extenuating circumstances.
If you do not communicate with me before submitting an assignment late, the GCU late policy will be in effect.
I do not accept assignments that are two or more weeks late unless we have worked out an extension.
As per policy, no assignments are accepted after the last day of class. Any assignment submitted after midnight on the last day of class will not be accepted for grading.
Communication

Communication is so very important. There are multiple ways to communicate with me:
Questions to Instructor Forum: This is a great place to ask course content or assignment questions. If you have a question, there is a good chance one of your peers does as well. This is a public forum for the class.
Individual Forum: This is a private forum to ask me questions or send me messages. This will be checked at least once every 24 hours.