Nurses are paid well, and the more qualifications you have, the better your career opportunities. That, however, is not an excuse to give up on your entrepreneurial dreams by any means. Although it may not always feel intuitive, by the time we are done with discussing the five ideas and a few tips for launching your own startup as a nursing professional, you will know just how intuitive it can be with the right steps.
Start a Home Health Aide Service
When people begin to age, they often find themselves slowly losing the ability to do even day-to-day tasks by themselves without assistance. Seniors who need health aide assistance at home are usually among the following groups:
- Seniors who are simply too old to physically move around and conduct regular life activities without an aide
- Seniors who have lost memory and other cognitive abilities due to age
- Seniors with dementia, Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative disorders
- Seniors who do not want to stay in an old age home, but cannot stay alone either
- Anyone who has suffered an accident and cannot move around on their own
- Physically disabled individuals and those with mental health issues
Home-based geriatric care and other health aide services are booming fields, and as long as you have a significant bit of knowledge and experience in similar fields yourself, it should not be too hard to put your skills and contacts to use and set up a home health aide business in no time.
Start Your Own Facility
There are primarily two ways to go about setting up your own nursing home or nursing facility:
- You can start a fully-fledged diagnostic center or outpatient healthcare facility
- It can be an agency for recruiting and assigning nurses to various hospitals and other medical centers in the area
Either way, you will need to complete further education that’s specifically geared for preparing nurses to take up leadership roles in the field of healthcare. A DNP-ENL nurse leader program is one of the most well-suited courses for that, on account of the following reasons:
- DNP-ENL is the highest possible qualification for a nurse, with stress on administration, management, business development, and healthcare policies
- It perfectly merges the highly complex profession of nursing with the administrative capabilities of a business leader
- The degree gives massive professional credence to the nurse, making it easier to impress important parties and form connections
- Even if you want to stay in the profession, you will assume leadership positions (CEO, CNO, director, HOD, etc.) in the nursing community
Provide Care to the Terminally Ill with a Hospice Service
Every once in a while, we all come across a terminally ill patient, but nurses come across them far too often. If you are someone who feels deeply for the patients who cannot be cured, consider putting your compassion to use by starting hospice care. Consider the following tips and facts to help your new venture see success.
- Decide between in-home and in-patient hospice care
- The former is going to be a lot cheaper to start with, but the latter can get expensive
- In-patient hospices are more expensive to start and manage, but they will generate significantly more revenue
- Decide the kind of terminal illnesses you will be handling
- Prepare specifically for those illnesses by investing in equipment that stands to benefit patients suffering from those illnesses
- Common equipment in hospices includes oxygen supply systems, ergonomic beds, wheelchairs, patient lifts, specially designed bathrooms, necessary pain-aides and other medication, etc.
- Arrange and design the hospice to create a cheery but not too loud environment
- Keep in touch with a therapist to stay in control of your mental health; hospices can be tough settings to deal with emotionally
You Can Take the Legal Route
This will not require getting a law degree, although it may seem like it will! If you are a nurse with significant experience, you can work closely with lawyers, attorneys, the police, and the courts to help them with investigations and testimonials. The number of criminal activities is not going down any time soon, unfortunately, so the demand for medical assistance from experienced doctors and nurses is often a constant affair, especially in the big cities.
Become an Independent Nurse Practitioner
In a number of states, it is completely legal for nurses to open their own autonomous healthcare facilities on becoming a nurse practitioner. In other states, the autonomy is only partial, but due to a massive deficit in available doctors, more and more states are considering the prospect of providing complete autonomy to nurse practitioners.
It is expected that by the next five years, most states may grant that autonomy as well. Even if your state doesn’t allow you the autonomy you will need to start your own NP practice, you can move to any of the states that do. Nurse practitioners can choose from the following specializations:
- Family Nurse Practitioner (FNP)
- Neonatal Nurse Practitioner (NNP)
- Pediatric Nurse Practitioner (PNP)
- Psychiatric/Mental Health Nurse Practitioner (PMHNP)
Although each of these specializations has tremendous demand today, some of them do pay more than the others. Which one will pay more is harder to discern, and can be subject to the location. In the long run, though, the prospects of each will increase substantially.
Do understand that while these ideas have all been explored, there’s an opportunity in all of them today. The reason for this is the simple fact that the United States does not have enough nurses to meet its national demand as of now.
Nursing as a profession is lucrative and extremely demanding for sure, but when you take up a leadership role, the entire industry opens up to you. You will no longer be limited to any one field or another after gathering enough experience as a healthcare leader. The opportunity to expand and also to help those that need it the most are immense in nursing entrepreneurship today, and it is going to become even bigger tomorrow.
