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MSN Insight: What Nursing Students Should Know About Creating a Professional Portfolio

Study alongside Walden University students with this required reading taken from the MSN degree course: Public Health Nursing Leadership.

With jobs for registered nurses expected to increase by 15%1 and jobs for nurse practitioners expected to increase by 31% between 2016 and 2026,2 there are a lot of opportunities for nurses. And those numbers don’t even include all the opportunities in nursing education, nursing management, and other nursing fields like nurse mentoring and healthcare informatics.

If you’re thinking about heading to nursing school to help enhance your nursing career, you’ve picked an excellent time. But earning a degree like a Master of Science in Nursing (MSN) is just one step. To take your career in nursing as far as it can go, you also have to know how to land the best nursing jobs, whether you want to become a nurse manager, practitioner nurse, or hold any other nurse executive role.

MSN Insight: What Nursing Students Should Know About Creating a Professional Portfolio

In the Walden University MSN nursing course Public Health Nursing Leadership, students learn about one of the best ways to demonstrate their educational and professional qualifications: creating a professional portfolio. In this course, students study a Walden-generated guide to creating such a portfolio. The guide provides plenty of information, including:

How a Professional Portfolio Helps

  • It provides a repository for your educational and professional accomplishments.
  • It documents your educational progression and growth.
  • It projects a professional image.
  • It communicates accomplishments to colleagues and the professional community.

What a Professional Portfolio Should Include

  • A program of study
  • A professional development plan (PDP)
  • A current Curriculum Vitae (CV)/Résumé
  • Examples of important assignments from each course you’ve taken
  • Continuing Education (CE), if applicable
  • End of program outcome evidence chart to demonstrate learning and mastery of important knowledge for and skills of a nurse
  • Final reflection, providing a personal case for how your education has prepared you for an advanced nursing role

How a Professional Portfolio Should Be Formatted

Since you want your portfolio to look professional and be easy for prospective employers to read, the Walden-generated professional portfolio guide also provides students with all the information they need to organize and properly format their portfolio.

The Benefit of Earning Your MSN Degree From Walden

The guide to creating a professional portfolio is just one of the many resources you can study in the wide variety of courses available through Walden University’s MSN program. And it’s just one of the many ways earning your master’s of science in nursing from Walden can help your nursing career.

Among the many benefits of attending Walden, the university’s online education format is one of the most popular. Walden’s online MSN program gives working nurses like you the ability to earn a master’s degree in nursing while continuing to be a full-time nurse. This is possible because you can take your master’s in nursing online classes at whatever time of day fits your schedule best and from wherever you have internet access.

However, online learning isn’t the only reason Walden produces more nurses with advanced degrees than any other university.3 Walden also offers a wide range of master’s in nursing specializations, including Family Nurse Practitioner, Psychiatric-Mental Health Nurse Practitioner, Nursing Education, Public Health Nursing, Nursing Informatics, Nurse Executive, Adult-Gerontology Acute Care Nurse Practitioner, and Adult-Gerontology Primary Care Nurse Practitioner.

There are so many opportunities for nurses these days. Through Walden’s MSN specializations, you can put yourself in position to take advantage of the best opportunities out there.

Walden University is an accredited institution offering a Master of Science in Nursing degree program online. Expand your career options and earn your degree in a convenient, flexible format that fits your busy life.


1Source: www.bls.gov/ooh/healthcare/registered-nurses.htm
2Source: www.bls.gov/ooh/healthcare/nurse-anesthetists-nurse-midwives-and-nurse-practitioners.htm
3Source: National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) IPEDS database. Retrieved July 2017, using CIP codes 51.3801 (Registered Nursing/Registered Nurse); 51.3808
(Nursing Science); 51.3818 (Nursing Practice). Includes 2016 preliminary data.

Walden University is accredited by The Higher Learning Commission, www.hlcommission.org.

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