title: Owning your professional development.
abstract: Professional development encompasses more than simply attending continuing education courses or returning to school for advanced degrees. It can also refer to looking up an unfamiliar diagnosis, changing your practice based on new evidence, and networking with peers about professional issues. Professional growth also involves having curiosity, wanting to provide the best possible care for your patients, and exuding excellence as a nurse. It is about investing in yourself! In doing so, you are not only growing as a professional but also promoting the image of nursing. Several national initiatives, such as Magnet and the Institute of Medicine's (IOM 's) Future of Nursing Report, are available to help improve and transform health care, and also to hopefully help motivate us.1 However, the impetus for professional development needs to come from within each individual nurse.
authors.affiliation: Baylor Health Care System, Dallas, TX, USA. jobethp@att.net
authors.forename: Jobeth
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Pilcher
mesh_terms: D002568:Certification; D004509:Education, Nursing, Continuing / Q000379:methods*; D004511:Education, Nursing, Graduate; D006801:Humans; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D017283:Neonatal Nursing / Q000193:education* / Q000592:standards; D014481:United States