Career Coaching | RCN Career resources

If you have booked a Career Coaching session, or are looking to book one, please ensure you research any roles you’re interested in before your session.

Career Coaches will not be able to give advice on roles, pathways or answer queries such as “How do I become a Practice Nurse,” or “What courses do Advanced Nurse Practitioners need?”

RCN Career pathway resource

The RCN’s Nursing career resource has information about different roles and career pathways, including transferable skills, entry requirements, useful qualifications, case studies, videos, and more.

If you’re a nurse, examples of roles covered include Advanced Nurse Practitioner, Practice Nurse, Practice Educator, Nurse lecturer, Research Nurse, District Nurse, Specialist Nurse, School Nurse, Telehealth Nurse, Continuing Healthcare Assessor, Care Home Manager, Ward Manager, and more.

If you’re a nursing support worker, the resource covers roles like Assistant Practitioner, Nursing Associate, Research Practitioner, Cancer Navigator, Education Practitioner, Nurse Apprenticeship schemes and more.

RCN Forum Facebook groups

Each of our RCN forums relate to a different clinical area or specialism within healthcare, and are packed with useful information and resources. Every forum also has its own dedicated Facebook group, where you can connect, share, and chat to your peers working in that particular field or specialism, or ask for tips, insight, advice, recommendations etc. They may be able to advise you on skills needed, recommended courses, what the role is like, current job market, etc.

Ideas and inspiration

We have ideas on working within clinical roles, education roles, research roles and leadership roles too. Our page on work life balance has some ideas of more non-conventional nursing roles, roles with core hours, office based roles, and more.

Investigating Person Specifications 

To find out what kind of experience, skills, or qualifications are essential/desirable for a particular role, you can search for jobs and vancancies on websites such as NHS jobs, and examine the Selection Criteria and Person Specification for the roles you’re interested in. This will tell you about the type of essential criteria or desirable criteria employers are asking for, and you will get an idea of what types of experience, skills, courses, or qualifications are expected.

It’s important to note that criteria can vary from employer to employer so try and compare as many as you can to get a good, all round picture. For example one Practice Nurse vacancy may ask for a qualification in prescribing and experience in family planning, whereas another Practice Nurse vacancy may just ask for NMC registration and a willingness to nurse. 

General resources

Country Specific resources:

If you need more help

If you get stuck, contact the RCN Careers Service for support, and we’ll do our best to assist.