Having an MBA in nursing gives you access to a high-paying career. Generally, the nursing course doesn’t prepare students for earning beyond their undergraduate degrees. Nursing students lack the knowledge of how they can further their studies and land a high-income job.
Getting an MSN dual degree or an MBA from a course like: https://www.gcu.edu/degree-programs/msn-mba-dual-degree allows you to incorporate your nursing background with business skills and capabilities. In turn, this will help you understand the core business principles which nurses can apply in their daily operations in a healthcare facility.
Here are 5 reasons why nurses should complete their MBA degrees. Let’s get started.
Gives you knowledge of a hospital as a business
A hospital is a business, and patients are customers. However, most healthcare practitioners don’t view this concept as it is. Getting an MBA helps nurses understand the economic and finance concept behind healthcare facility management.
From a theoretical perspective, nursing involves caring about patients, and business is all about putting your customers’ needs first. With an MBA, nurses can understand how payment and reimbursement of patients work, the difference between inpatient and outpatient, how the management works, resource allocation, etc.
This gives nurses an insight into the operations of a hospital, allowing nurses to serve patients better.
Job opportunities in the management positions
MBA degrees open doors for numerous opportunities in leadership and management positions. This translates to an increase in salaries and having a high profile career. It also comes with executive titles. Some of the healthcare management careers nurses can secure with an MBA include;
- Healthcare manager. You’ll work closely with doctors, make important decisions, formulate policies, be in charge of budgeting and accounting, help medical insurance companies keep up with the upcoming trends, etc.
- Nurse administrator. As a nurse administrator, you’ll oversee different managerial duties and implement healthcare procedures in the institution.
- Healthcare information manager. A healthcare information manager’s role is to analyze, collect, and store patients’ personal information to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands.
Build up your management and leadership capabilities
The most successful and effective business leaders are not born. Real leadership capabilities come from experience and a strong commitment to learning. Although some people are naturally talented with certain traits that increase their chances of landing managerial roles, every nurse has the potential to become a great manager or leader.
If you are wondering how to acquire these leadership skills, getting an MBA degree is the ultimate practical solution to developing the necessary traits for building up your management skills. What’s even better, completing an MBA degree equips nurses with the essential skills to become better managers and decision-makers.
As a nurse, laying the foundation of your professional studies in business will help you understand key issues concerning your job, such as insurance reimbursements, labor costs, cash flow, expenses, and budget reading and allocation. Budget interpretation and allocation is a critical part of any nursing leader job. You have to establish how to operate within a certain budget to ensure you acquire the funding you require to run a thriving nursing unit.
Earn an excellent salary
Some of the highest-paid professionals you can find are medical managers. Now imagine incorporating some business knowledge and more leadership and decision making skills into your medical manager profession. Besides, business executives also earn a good sum of money in terms of salaries.
You might have to work really hard to earn all these accolades, but the struggle is worth it. Medical and health service managers are assured of an excellent starting salary on average. Some nursing leadership roles with these lucrative salaries include healthcare managers, health administrators, and many more medical managerial positions.
That’s not all; the nursing and healthcare industry’s employment outlook is auspicious moving forward, given the various developments and the increasing population.
Earn higher qualifications when you pair your MBA with an MSN
As a nursing leader, your qualifications, with a strong emphasis on the business side of healthcare, will add a lot of weight to your resume.
You can start your own nursing practice also or another practice in a managerial role. Besides, a nursing educator with vast experience in teaching clinical practices and an MSN may get an MBA to support their career in a business direction.
Final thoughts
As a nurse, you have already invested a lot to complete your nursing degree. However, the job might not be living up to your income or job satisfaction expectations. Starting another degree from scratch might seem a daunting prospect; however, the new degree can help open new avenues that you may not have been able to access.
