Beginning a career or when someone enters the professional settings, there are different levels of transition that usually occur. During such transitions, one will always feel blank about the next step and the level of confusion as well as the demands of a new working platform tends to pressurize them even to a point of getting stressful (Hall, Waddell, Donner & Wheeler, 2004). Career coaching, entails the helping an individual especially the new comers to find the right path for their long term development in the career. It involves more than just the lay words of advice and guidance and extends to drawing out clear and realistic plans about the career path that an individual should take based on their strengths, needs, aspirations, talent and dreams.
This implies that a career coach is one who is well versed with the dynamics of the profession across social, cultural, physical and economic aspects (Hall, Waddell, Donner & Wheeler, 2004). I have been a lucky individual myself since I have had a career coach who has been guiding my career planning since I began my education in the nursing college. My former Medical-surgical professor has played a vital role in helping me to make the right decisions in education, career choices and timely planning which I think would have been a different and disastrous situation had I not net the professor. To this date, I make my decisions depending on the advice he offers me since I have still maintained close contact with him and he indeed acts as a father figure to me. I remember a time when I sought to begin my BSN program and I was considering also beginning an online course in social work and public health.
While I had a viable idea, I came to realize that my inexperience and high ambitions would have cost me one of the educational paths as the level of work that would have piled up during the last phases of the BSN and the online course wield have been beyond my ability. It is only when the professor shunned the idea and indicated to me the level of work I was to handle in the next phase of my BSN that I decided to let that dream go. Probably today, I could not be where I am and the frustration could either have sent me into depression other complications or spoilt my while career trajectory. I have to admit that I have not at anytime acted as a career coach to anyone. This is not just because I do not consider it necessary but I feel that I am yet to gain the necessary knowledge and experience to help one make informed decisions in a career. I feel I need to know more about the dynamics of nursing not just in clinical knowledge but at policy level which will come with time and experience (Hall, Waddell, Donner & Wheeler, 2004).
References
Hall, L. M., Waddell, J., Donner, G., & Wheeler, M. M. (2004). Outcomes of a career planning and development program for registered nurses. Nursing Economics, 22, 231-238.
