Most nurses are worked in shifts and many of them work in 12-hour shift making them hard to plan for evening class on continuous education program whether they are doing a day shift or a night shift. The advantages of online degree programs that enable students to enter to the classes remotely with flexible learning schedule provide the best solution for nurses to earn a degree for their career advancement.
Many hospitals and medical care centers are encouraging their registered nurses to pursue their academic careers, which are good not only for the hospital system, patients and the community, earning a bachelor or graduate degree helps nurses to enjoy better income and career challenges. The hospitals typically try to give their nurses as much information as possible about the education options, and many of these hospitals are allocating education reimbursement benefit for the nurses to encourage them to earn a higher credential through continuous education program. Hence, the nurses should utilize the benefit for their future career planning.
Prior to the available of online degree program, the key barrier that stop most nurses from continue their education after entering the workplace is they are facing difficulties to find time to sit through years’ or months’ of coursework in a traditional classroom setting. Since the available of online education in nursing or healthcare majors remove the barrier and enable nurses who are interested to advance their career to pursue an academic degree online. They can choose to logon to the online classes whether from their home, workplace or where ever they are, even if they are on travel. Most online degree programs allow a good degree of flexibility that enables students to plan their study schedule based on their own pace.
Seeing the demand of nursing degree programs and the advantages of online education, many traditional campus-based nursing schools have made their nursing degree programs available for online students while other online universities are offering various online nursing programs to those who are interested in nursing careers. Nurses who are interested to advance their career to a higher level can take advantage of the online degree program to purse a bachelor or graduate nursing degree while continue their current work life.
While the demand drives more nursing degree programs being introduced in online education format which provides more choices for students to choose one that best meet their needs, there are a few factors you need to take into consideration when deciding to pursue a degree online; one of them is “diploma mill”. Diploma mills are those who offer fake degrees or degrees that are unrecognized in job market need to be avoided with your best efforts. The best way to avoid yourself being a victim of diploma mills, you are advised to only consider online nursing degree programs offered by national or regional accredited schools.
The bottom line is online degrees provide a better option for nurses to pursue an advanced degree and nurses should take advantage of it to become a better educated health professional that benefit both the community and their own career future.
