Can an Online Nursing Degree Help You Achieve More?

June 16, 2020

If you have decided that nursing is the ideal career for you, you will start to look at just how to achieve that goal. Of course, you’ll need to have nursing qualifications behind you when you apply for jobs, and that means picking the right college and the right program. You’ll have to study hard, gain your qualifications, and only then can you apply for a job as a nurse at the hospital or clinic that you want.

This is not necessarily the end of your nursing studies or ideals, however. No matter what level you start at, there is always going to be a chance of promotion and getting to the next level and the next and so on if that is what you want to do. It’s not required; you can stay at the level you are happiest with. However, if you do want to achieve as much as possible, you need to keep working and look for promotion opportunities as they arise.

Regarding the nursing degree that you might want to start, you should always pick one that is going to help you achieve as much as possible, and certainly, everything you want. Just how can having an online nursing degree help you achieve more?

Program Choice

An online degree at Marymount University nursing school is going to offer a lot of choices when it comes to the programs you can study, and having this choice is hugely important. The more choice you have, the easier it is to find a career in nursing that you are really going to love, and that is crucial if you want to achieve more.

Enjoying your career is what makes the difference between being successful or not. Those who love what they do are always going to push further, ask more questions, and do their own research to get better and achieve more. Those who aren’t interested in what they are doing won’t bother with this and will simply stay where they are.

Having an online college that offers a variety of different courses on hand to help you means that, even after your initial training is done, you can go back and learn more, gain additional qualifications and learn about different aspects of nursing. You will become much more valuable to an employer, you will enhance your own life, and you will achieve more in your career.

Lower Costs

For some, it is the cost of traditional college that means they can’t achieve all they want to in life. With many careers, including nursing, requiring college study and qualifications before it can be begun in a hospital, some of the people who would be more than happy to become a nurse simply can’t because it costs too much.

When you look at online nursing degrees, you will see that, for the most part, they cost less than a standard traditional college degree would. Plus, the payments can be spread out (depending on the college) which can be especially useful. This opens up the career of nursing to many more people than otherwise would have been able to work in this field, and this, of course, means they can achieve a lot more in their lives. Instead of dreaming about how much they would have loved to have been a nurse, and disliking the job they ended up doing because they couldn’t afford to attend a traditional college, they can pay less, a study from home in their own time, and still come away with a great qualification that will help them to achieve their ultimate goals.

A More Comfortable Learning Environment

When you think of studying for anything, including nursing, do you think of a big lecture hall filled with hundreds of students all listening to the lecturer at the front of the room? Maybe you think of a big screen and low lighting.

Or perhaps the first thing you think of is the traffic that you have to fight through to get to that lecture hall in the first place, and the gas you’re going to be using, and the parking you’re going to need to pay for. It could be the bus, train, or subway that you’re dreading, especially when you have to carry lots of heavy books around with you.

If you study online, you don’t have to think of any of this. You can instead work in an environment that is comfortable for you. If this means wearing your pajamas when studying, or lying in bed, or being at the kitchen table, or even having your own office space to study comfortable in, it’s down to you to choose. The point is, if you study at home you can be much more comfortable in a space you’re familiar with, and you won’t have to worry about the traffic or the cost of going to a physical college.

It is said that those who work from home are much more productive, and the trend for home working is undoubtedly growing. Of course, nurses cannot work from home, but they can achieve more by studying from home before their jobs begin.

The Convenience

Something that goes hand in hand with the comfort factor of studying at home is the convenience of it. Again, the convenience of an online course is certainly something that is going to help people to achieve more. If they work in a full-time job (including nursing) or they need to look after young children, or they have lots of other commitments, the fact that an online nursing degree can be studied at their own pace, in comfort, and at times that suit the learner is ideal.

This essentially means that those who would not have been able to enjoy a nursing course and gain the relevant qualifications for their chosen career because they didn’t have the time or their family situation meant that it was difficult can now do so and achieve much more besides. Work can be submitted online, and any feedback can be given in the same way; it’s an ideal way to learn that just makes so much sense and is such a great way to utilize your time, money, and the technology that exists in the world today and that we already have in our homes, at least for the most part.

Greater Interaction

One of the huge benefits of studying for an online nursing qualification is that you can interact much more with the lecturers, other students, and the course in general. Those who might not have had the confidence to speak up in a large room full of strangers can much more easily ask questions when it is just a small number of people (in group sessions, if those are available) or in the one to one sessions with tutors that are so often a part of an online degree.

Reticent or shy students can achieve much more in an online learning environment and then go on to achieve more in their lives as a result.

Career Advancement

As you know, it’s not just the first degree that can be gained through an online nursing course. It is also possible to gain additional degrees that will be required to advance your nursing career. This can be done while you are still working, so you can be gaining practical skills while you are being taught not theoretical skills too.

A problem that sometimes occurs when people are looking for career advancement is that a recruiter may look at their resume and spot that there are gaps. These gaps may have been due to the study to get the qualification that would make the applicant suitable for the job. Still, ironically it can also cause concern to a recruiter and success might not be forthcoming. When you take an online course, there will be no gaps in your resume because you can continue to work at all times; that’s the great thing about a flexible course.

When you apply for the next step in your career, recruiters will see that not only do you have the qualifications needed, you also have taken the time and initiative to study for the job you want. You can impress them in many different ways by having applied for and studied for an online nursing course, including showing them your ambitions without them even having to ask.

Get Ahead of The Rest

There is a definite advantage in taking an online nursing course rather than going to a physical college to learn; you will never miss a class.

At a traditional college, it’s easy to miss a class even if you don’t intend to. Bad traffic, poor weather, sickness, missing your alarm, family emergencies, and more can all mean that you don’t make it to class on time or at all.

If you are working online, most of these reasons for missing a class no longer exist. There is no commute to deal with, the weather is not a factor, if you miss your alarm you can still log on and work at a time that suits you, and the same is true if you cannot log on at all one day due to emergencies or your own sickness – you still won’t ever actually miss out. Online courses can be done at times that suit you, rather than you having to make time for the course at specific periods.

Compared to those who attend a brick and mortar college to study nursing, online students will attend much more of their lessons and therefore can achieve much more.