Nursing Continuing Education For the 21st Century

One need only scan a newspaper or read a magazine to be astounded by the many stories about new medical breakthroughs, disease processes, emerging threats of disease, or innovations in medical and healthcare technology. World Health Organization warns us to prepare for a potential global bird flu epidemic, terrorists threaten us with chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, and new protocols for ACLS are released. How is a working nurse to keep up?

Nursing education provides the basic building blocks of medical, scientific and nursing knowledge, but competence in the nursing profession requires an ongoing process of training. Continuing education for nurses is necessary for the nurse to be updated with the latest practice issues and the need for patient safety. Some states have made continuing education for nurses mandatory and requires a certain number of course credit hours must be attained before license renewal, or require certain mandatory course subjects, while other states leave it to the nursing professional themselves to accept personal responsibility for their own continued learning . Regardless of whether nursing continuing education, or Nursing CEUS as such programs are often mentioned, are mandatory in your state or not, all nurses who describe themselves as professionals must be willing and prepared to implement changes in their own practice by realizing that competence in any profession requires periodic updating.

Methods for obtaining nursing continuing education hours and the pro's and con's of each:

1. Non-fiction: The majority of professional nursing journals offer an article for further credit. Some offer a partial credit hours or credit hours to readers who complete a post test after reading the article and send it into While some journals offer credit for free, others charge $ 10 or more, and besides the hassle of tear one post-test form and send it into the nurse has no official record of having taken and passed the course. Obtain training hours through professional journals is costly and inefficient that the cost of the magazine itself will be considered along with the price of the course, if there is one, and the time and cost of shipping beyond the lack of official registration of the completion and failure Central maintenance of all credits accumulated by the nurse. In addition, nurses who rely on professional journals for their CEU hours are typically only exposed to courses related to their own specialty rather than a broader range of matters that they actually have to face today is still evolving health care climate.

2. Seminars: Professional development programs and seminars that offer accredited continuing education hours for nurses are offered at various locations in every state, in some foreign countries, and even cruises. Employers frequently pay the registration fees for nurses to attend local seminars of short duration, one day, but nurses still have to sacrifice their precious day off to attend them or lose time from work to do. In addition to nurses who attend seminars away from home have to pay their own travel expenses, hotel bills and expenses for meals. Needless to say, cruises and foreign travel is an appealing avenue, but to have a continuing training in this method is not something that every working nurse can afford to do.

3. Online Nursing CEUS: The internet provides nurses access to extremely affordable and high quality accredited training courses covering a plethora of professional nursing topics. Online nursing ceu courses are the gateway to nursing continuing education for the 21st century! Nurses who take advantage of online ceu courses are not limited by geographic barriers, economic hardship, or the trouble to take time from work or family to attend courses. Online nursing training courses are readily available for both mandatory state required subjects, courses in one's own nursing specialty, and courses that all nurses, regardless of practice specialty must be familiar with so nurses have access to a much wider range of subjects than they ever have had before, when restricted primarily to journals or seminars. Beyond these advantages, great as is, online nursing ceu courses are inexpensive, up to date with changing trends that can be taken from the comfort of your own home, generally allow the nurses to take them to keep an official record of courses completed and credit hours earned in online course provider, and allow nurses who complete a course to print the course certificate immediately upon completion.

To be professional and to ensure the welfare of the public nurses need to continue their education throughout their careers through a variety of ways, including by taking refresher courses. The most convenient and most cost effective method of nursing continuing education is by taking online Nursing CE courses. Online nursing training courses are readily available, flexible and offer online tracking, and provide nurses with the broad spectrum of topics, they need to familiarize themselves with in order to keep abreast with today's changing healthcare climate. Online nursing continuing education is indeed facing nursing continuing education for the 21st century!