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Ask any passerby on the street to describe nurses. You’ll likely hear a description of a woman in scrubs with a stethoscope around her neck, caring for patients in a hospital. While that picture may be accurate for a certain percentage of nurses, there are plenty whose professional life looks much different, including those who have embraced the world of nurse entrepreneurship. 

A Look at the Numbers

There are plenty of statistics that we know about nurses:

Two hundred seventy thousand may not seem like an enormous number of nurses in business, yet over a quarter of a million is not a bad showing, especially when many people — including nurses — don’t even recognize entrepreneurship as an option. No matter, the reality is that both anecdotal evidence and objective data demonstrate that nurse entrepreneurship is a growing and powerful trend among nurses seeking career paths outside the mainstream, where they have ultimate control over their professional fate. 

What Do Nurse Entrepreneurs Do? 

The breadth and depth of nurse-run entrepreneurial endeavors make for an impressive list. Potential entrepreneurial pathways for nurses include, but are not limited to: 

  • Freelance writer/journalist/blogger
  • Motivational/keynote speaker
  • Podcaster
  • YouTube or TikTok personality
  • Owner of a nurse-run home health agency
  • Independent nurse care manager
  • Inventor and marketer of medical products
  • App developer
  • Legal nurse consultant
  • Private practice (RN or NP)
  • Medical spa owner
  • Cannabis nurse consultant
  • Infusion nurse
  • Private duty nurse
  • Herbalist
  • End-of-life/hospice/palliative care consultant
  • Massage therapist/bodyworker
  • Yoga instructor/yoga therapist
  • Acupuncturist
  • Hypnotherapist
  • Doula
  • CPR, BLS, ACLS, First Aid instructor
  • Nurse consultant or coach (e.g., fertility, career, mindfulness, writing, nutrition, fitness, health and wellness, elder care, lactation, childbirth, relationships, business, etc.)
  • Online or in-person course creator 
  • Diabetes educator
  • Foot care service provider
  • Nurse staffing agency
  • Medical scrubs designer and marketer

There are numerous real-life examples of these and other nursing businesses operating in the marketplace at this very moment. Nurses are designing, patenting, and marketing their own medical products; providing coaching and consulting in an enormous variety of specialty areas; creating online and in-person courses for medical professionals or laypeople; and so on. 

The National Nurses in Business Association (NNBA) and the Society of Nurse Scientists, Innovators, Entrepreneurs, and Leaders (SONSIEL) are two leading organizations supporting nurses in business, and there are webinars, courses, meetups, and conferences offering services and inspiration to nurses pursuing such career avenues. 

Just-in-Time Learning and Critical Thinking

What might lead a nurse to hesitate about an entrepreneurial project could be that nursing school needs to prepare us for that milieu, and the venture’s complexity may seem particularly overwhelming. However, in the business world, many skills (e.g., accounting and bookkeeping, invoicing, marketing, social media, writing web copy, etc.) can be acquired on an as-needed and just-in-time basis. Furthermore, other professionals can be hired to assist us with such tasks or at least teach us how to tackle them ourselves. 

Nurses are entirely accustomed to just-in-time learning since they fundamentally understand that there will often be times when they need to learn a new skill “just in time” because you can’t know everything. Some new competencies must simply be learned on the fly. 

The truth is that numerous nurses have found that the critical thinking and problem-solving skills developed and honed through working as clinical nurses lend themselves to the sphere of business. Puzzling through obstacles, creating workarounds, and otherwise spitballing methods for getting things done come naturally to nurses. The enormous success of a growing community of nurse entrepreneurs is a testament to nurses’ ability to pivot into business. 

Despite the narrow view of what nurses are capable of, the possibilities for nurse entrepreneurship have never been more robust. When a nurse is worn out from clinical, academic, or leadership roles and needs a novel direction to take their career, business remains a direction worthy of examination. Nurses make powerful and influential entrepreneurs, and the sky’s the limit when it comes to what’s truly possible. 

Daily Nurse is thrilled to feature Keith Carlson, “Nurse Keith,” a well-known nurse career coach and podcaster of The Nurse Keith Show as a guest columnist. Check back every other Thursday for Keith’s column. 

Keith Carlson
See also
Remembering Your Novice Nurse Self
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