Are you a nurse in business or thinking about business?

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Kunle Emmanuel
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Are you a nurse in business or thinking about business?

Unread post by Kunle Emmanuel »

Are you a nurse in business or a nurse thinking about being in business? Or do you want to get away from the bedside but still make a difference in someone’s life?

Are you a nurse who wants to strike out on your own but you’re not sure what you could do as a self-employed nurse? Or do you want to get away from the bedside but still make a difference in someone’s life?

Join our nurse entrepreneurs network group Nigeria. We share ideas on this thread. You will have to register and login to post questions discussion.

Nurse Entrepreneurs use their nursing education and business background to start ventures within the healthcare industry—establishing, promoting and running their own companies. Some develop or marketing medical devices, or home health products.

To set out on your own as a Nurse Entrepreneur, some key skills to have include: creativity, business savvy, ability to find funding and identify a niche market, as well as a consistent customer base.

Things You'll Do:
Your business could provide patient care, nursing education, home health or consulting
Seek out business opportunities and funding
Use your experience in healthcare and business skills to build a relevant business
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Kunle Emmanuel
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Thinking of becoming a Nurse Entrepreneur?

Unread post by Kunle Emmanuel »

Throughout history, mothers and grandmothers, sisters of religious orders, and other wise women acted as nurses. It wasn't until the mid-19th century that the first secular school of nursing was started—by nursing pioneer Florence Nightingale, who could be considered the first nurse entrepreneur. But she wasn't the only one: Mary Grant Seacole (1805 – 1881) was a lesser-known nurse entrepreneur of the same era. During the Crimean War, she opened a hotel where wounded soldiers from both sides could recover. She charged the officers for their stays, but her services to soldiers were free.

During the early 20th century in the United States, independent nurses contracted their services directly to patients. That trend changed when the Great Depression began in 1929 and patients could no longer afford private nurses. In order to make a living, nurses took jobs at their alma maters—the hospitals. Sadly, most of them never returned to their independent status after that.

Today, nurses are making a comeback as independent contractors and providing their services directly to patients again. Healthcare businesses are expected to continue to outsource and hire temporary help, making nurse entrepreneurship realistic and profitable now and in the years to come.

With the average age of today's nurse in the mid-50s, thoughts of retiring from traditional nursing at some point in our lives are inevitable. We can't continue indefinitely to lift and turn patients. Nurse entrepreneurship is an ideal exit destination when the time is right. Share with us idea of business within the healthcare in Nigeria.
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Kunle Emmanuel
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Re: Thinking of becoming a Nurse Entrepreneur?

Unread post by Kunle Emmanuel »

Have you ever wondered if you could start your own successful business as a nurse? What products or services would you offer? What are people hungry for? How would you set it all up?

All nurses, no matter how much they love their patients, sometimes work shifts that leave them dreaming about ‘escaping the bedside’ as a nurse entrepreneur.
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Re: Thinking of becoming a Nurse Entrepreneur?

Unread post by Kunle Emmanuel »

So many of us are looking for ways to make more money while we are working as a nurse.

Nurses are looking for ways to use their talents, skills and time to advance their career, make extra income or help more people. If you want to start your own business, the following advice is for you:

• Make a consistent effort
• Be goal oriented and highly focused on those goals
• Know what you are shooting for – start with the end in mind
• Focus your energy on your goals like a laser
• Avoid distraction by targeting activities that bring you closer to your goals
• Learn to promote and market yourself
• Be patient because businesses take time to grow
• Learn as you earn from someone you trust – get a mentor or a coach
• Find something you enjoy doing

Rather than just spending 40 hours at a job, most nurses are finding it important to learn new skillsets for their businesses, which help them add value to their clients and build something solid for themselves.
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Re: Are you a nurse in business or thinking about business?

Unread post by Kunle Emmanuel »

All nurses who long to cease being a staff nurse and start being their own boss and achieving unlimited earning potential, find that when they start to brainstorm, the ideas for nursing-related businesses are endless.

There are many important factors to consider when starting your own nursing business.

First off, you will want to determine if your business idea is really something worth pursuing as a business (and not just a hobby). By doing market research and targeted keyword searches (in Google Keyword Tool, for example) to discover the popularity and profitability of your idea, you can narrow down the field of possibility and rule-out ideas that will be potential non-earners. Plus, you can discover some real winners!

Also, don’t be afraid to ask others (friends, family members, Facebook groups, Nursing Forums, Nursing Blogs and colleagues) what they think about your idea. If there is resounding uncertainty, then you may want to rethink your plan.

Also, you will want to consider how much others will pay for your services or products or how often they will purchase these services. This will help you with determining your prices and help you get clear on the demand side of the business. Ultimately, understanding your pricing and your customer’s lifecycle will also help you determine if your idea is financially feasible.

You will also want to get a better grasp on your finances. You may want to seek out the advice of others who run similar businesses, so that you can get an idea of how much the business is going to initially cost you. They also may be able to recommend trusted and inexpensive vendors to you to help you get your business up and running properly. Having these types of vendors can make or break you at the start…
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Re: Are you a nurse in business or thinking about business?

Unread post by Queenet »

Very intresting
"Changing how the world thinks about nursing".
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Re: Are you a nurse in business or thinking about business?

Unread post by Kunle Emmanuel »

There are so many opportunities for you as a nurse that I cannot list them all, but to get you thinking about becoming a nurse entrepreneur, I’ve provided some tips to help you get into the right mindset.

Are other nurses doing what you are considering? In other words, is there a market for your big idea? It’s a good thing if there is. Nothing is wrong with a little competition.


Are you currently in a nursing specialty you love? If so, could you turn this into a business? (Most likely the answer will be yes.)

What are you good at or what do you like to do? Turn what you love to do into a business by combining your nursing skills with your passion such as cooking, yoga, teaching or technology, etc.

Do you have any technical skills? The field of Nursing Informatics is growing and will continue as we move into Electronic Health Records. Here you could get into the consulting field offering your services to software companies and healthcare organizations, a very lucrative business to venture into.

What do others say you are good at? Maybe it’s teaching or good nursing communication skills or speaking. Any of these could be great nursing businesses. If you love to teach, try teaching new nurses or healthcare organizations. Or how about starting your own nurse staffing agency or nursing assistant program. You could develop workshops for those in your community teaching diabetic management or self-care to caregivers, just to name a few.

Get creative in coming up with ideas of how you could become a nurse entrepreneur. It can be as easy as starting with the nursing specialty you are in or one you have an interest in. As I mentioned above, any nursing specialty could be turned into a nursing business.
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Re: Are you a nurse in business or thinking about business?

Unread post by Kunle Emmanuel »

EXCELLENT TIPS BY WARREN BUFFET.

On Earnings: "Never depend on Single Income. Make investment to create a second source."

On Spending: "If you buy things you don't need, soon you will have to sell things you need."

On Savings: "Do not save what is left after spending, but spend what is left after saving."

On Taking Risk: "Never test the depth of river with both feet."

... On Investment: "Do not put all eggs in one basket."

On Expectations: "Honesty is very expensive gift. Do not expect it from cheap people".
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Re: Are you a nurse in business or thinking about business?

Unread post by Winalite »

Nice write-up.
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Re: Are you a nurse in business or thinking about business?

Unread post by Kunle Emmanuel »

Going into business takes risk. Willingness to take calculated risks is inherent in building a business.

Nurses put ourselves on the line each and every day. I have worked a shift or two taking care of a patient who was not on any precautions (beyond standard), to return the next day and the same patient is now in “isolation.” Every patient we care for puts us in harm’s way (in terms of microbes, but also in terms of possible abuse). That’s just a risk we take. Of course we use precautions (similar to how entrepreneurs make smart decisions), but the risk is still there.


Entrepreneurs must develop the ability to prioritize short term and long term tasks.

If you were not adept at prioritizing before nursing, you developed that skill when working on the floor. You either get super good at prioritizing what needs to be done, or you drown. Shift after shift. It can make the difference between feeling competent and confident, and feeling overwhelmed and incapable.


Every entrepreneur must have leadership skills. Leadership includes exemplifying a calm disposition even amongst chaos and uncertainty.

Keeping our cool despite alarms, announcements, calls, lights, guests, family members, and demands left and right is essential to getting our work done. If we immediately reacted to every stimulus around us, nothing would be accomplished. Staying calm is also one of the skills that carries us through those harrowing moments (codes/system crashes/violent encounters, etc.)
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