Accelerate Your Career in Nursing : Nurse's Guide to Professional Advancement and Recognition

Accelerate Your Career in Nursing: A Guide to Professional Advancement and Recognition spells out how nurses can recognize and document their accomplishments and then use them to advance within health care. Our ultimate goal is that this book will, in turn, give nurses the credentials they need to earn a place at the health care table, in whatever setting that may be.

Within the book s chapters, a cadre of nurse leaders in education, academia, research, health care administration, and health policy share expertise and wisdom. Each author or author team discusses a number of current and emerging topics to help complement the various stages of your career trajectory. A complementary feature of this book is that the authors recount a defining personal moment in their professional careers and its connection to their respective chapters.

The content and special features of this book reflect the increased need for nurses to express their professional best and validate their distinction of excellence in today s health care arena. Each chapter provides helpful tips, informative tables, and resources and examples needed to advance professionally. In addition, we include personal stories based on the experiences of each author. These pieces, titled In Real Life, reflect the author s vast expertise and passion for the nursing profession. Remember This sections highlight major themes in each chapter, while those titled Good to Know offer relevant information for your consideration.

Janice Phillips PhD, RN, FAAN, is an experienced clinician, researcher, educator, and public policy advocate in the health care arena who completed service as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Fellow (2010 2011), working in the office of Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-WV). With specialties spanning oncology, public health, women s health, health care disparities, and research administration, she has a passion for educating professional and lay audiences on a number of topics, including professional development, health disparities, health advocacy, and breast cancer. Phillips is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the 2006 Martin Luther King, Jr. Humanitarian Award from the University of Chicago Medical Center as well as the Distinguished Nurse Alumni Award from the University of Illinois College of Nursing and St. Xavier University. In 2007, she received the Nursing Spectrum Nursing Excellence Award for Advancing and Leading the Profession and, in 2012, she was inducted into the National Black Nurses Association s Institute of Excellence and the Institute of Medicine of Chicago. The author of more than 70 publications and two edited textbooks, Phillips holds a BSN from North Park College, an MS in community health from St. Xavier College, and a PhD from the University of Illinois College of Nursing. She is a member of numerous professional organizations, including the American Public Health Association, American Nurses Association, American Academy of Nursing, National Black Nurses Association, Oncology Nursing Society, and Sigma Theta Tau International. Phillips is an associate professor at Rush University College of Nursing, Chicago, Illinois.

Janet M. Boivin, BSN, BA, RN, has more than 30 years of experience as a nurse journalist and has written for several general and military newspapers. She has a bachelor of science degree in nursing from the University of Southern Maine in Portland, and a bachelor of art degree in journalism from Northeastern University in Boston. She worked as the national editor and writer for Nurse.com (formerly Nursing Spectrum/Nurse Week) for 18 years. She is the only nurse journalist to have traveled to a war zone to write about military nurses caring for the wounded. She traveled to Iraq three times and is one of few journalists to have observed and talked to detainees at Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp in Cuba. She has won several awards for her writing. Boivin served as Sigma Theta Tau International s book acquisitions editor from 2010 to 2011. In December 2011, she finished a 4-month nurse refresher course after 25 years away from the bedside. She now works as a staff nurse in a charitable clinic, where she sees the physical and psychological hardships incurred by some of the nearly 50 million people who cannot afford health care insurance in the United States. She also continues to work as a freelance health care writer.