MBA in Nursing Jobs: 10 Lucrative Careers

MBA in Nursing Jobs

Pursuing an MBA in nursing brings long term benefits unlocking prosperous manager, executive, consultant and entrepreneurship positions within the healthcare realm. Nurses gain the business skills to have an expanded impact on strategic and operational decisions guiding health systems.

While bedside nursing provides vital clinical training, modern healthcare involves complex trade offs between cost, access, efficiency and quality. An MBA credential gives nurses financial, technological, analytical and leadership fluency to excel at higher levels within organizations. This guide covers fulfilling new nursing careers with an advanced business degree.

Why Earn an MBA in Nursing?

Top reasons to pursue graduate management education include:

• Higher earning potential reaching above $142K average comp
• Pathway into elite nurse executive and top management
• Understanding whole healthcare ecosystem dynamics
• Versatility qualifying for 20+ business-focused roles
• Future-proof skillset with increasing industry demand

For driven nurses seeking control over their professional trajectory, an MBA delivers required capabilities to ascend ranks into coveted senior posts with widespread influence.

Now let’s explore the top positions available for nurses possessing new know-how running healthcare as a competitive, nuanced business.

1. Nursing Department Manager

Department Managers or Assistant Directors lead a team of nurses delivering care within a specialty unit or entire hospital location. Applying both patient-side expertise and management technique, they ensure optimal delivery balancing various priorities.

Daily responsibilities involve:

• Managing and evaluating nurses regarding performance
• Facilitating interdepartmental communication
• Tracking budgets, expenses and resource allocation
• Assessing patient outcomes and nursing quality metrics
• Identifying process bottlenecks causing inefficiencies
• Implementing technology tools improving care
• Ensuring regulatory compliance is met

Strong communicators who strategically coordinate doctors, support staff, executives and their own nursing cohort thrive as middle managers. This first step up the leadership ranks offers a median pay of $118,800 annually.

The American Organization for Nursing Leadership could is a source for management best practices.

2. Director of Nursing

The senior most nursing officer within a healthcare facility, Directors of Nursing (DON) oversee administration for the entire patient care enterprise. These highly experienced registered nurses have a mastery of clinical best practices and vision to direct all nursing strategy facility-wide.

Core DON duties include:

• Developing and implementing nursing policies, objectives and protocols
• Recruiting, hiring and managing nursing staff across the organization
• Directing nurse training and education programs
• Coordinating care delivery procedures with doctors
• Advising C-suite executives on technologies, budgets and processes to improve nursing
• Analyzing performance metrics to set goals advancing patient outcomes

This role represents the pinnacle of nursing leadership. Requiring at least 10 years of diverse nursing expertise and collaborating amid complex industry dynamics, Directors of Nursing earn around $142,000, with added bonuses. Those with an MBA gain key business decision-making and analytical skills to amplify impact.

3. Independent Healthcare Consultant

Nurses who pursue healthcare consultant roles leverage both medical experience and business training to advise at executive levels. As trusted experts across clinical operations, technology implementations, regulatory processes or strategic planning, they provide recommendations improving performance for hospitals, payers, healthcare startups or government.

Common consultant focuses include:

• Cost savings – Optimizing spending and budgets
• Patient safety and infection prevention – Enhancing standards
• Nursing department flows – Improving coordination
• Health IT systems – EHR, telehealth and data analytics
• Mergers and acquisitions – Integration assistance
• Policy and regulation compliance

Top consultants focus intently on customer objectives providing solutions through detailed analysis. They enjoy flexible engagements each bringing new learning opportunities with clients ranging from regional hospitals to national payers. With both micro and macro level health system insights, nurse consultants offer C-level guidance to impact organizations at scale.

The American Association of Nurse Practitioners highlights the breadth of organizations that leverage nurse consultant expertise. 

4. Quality and Safety Officer

Stationed within hospitals, health systems or government agencies, Quality and Safety Officers utilize backgrounds as registered nurses and analytics skills to improve patient health outcomes. Using risk management techniques and data insights, they pinpoint areas needing improvement whether infection rates, readmission frequency or medical errors. By creating infrastructure around robust reporting based on industry benchmarks, they implement systemic changes – updating protocols, educating staff or launching training campaigns. Their leadership on evidence-based best practices achieves consistency advancing clinical excellence.

On a daily basis Quality Officers:

• Collect and evaluate facility-wide care quality data
• Identify leading indicators such as infections requiring intervention
• Research peer reviewed methods to bolster nursing practices
• Develop facility protocols, policies and tools to lower risks
• Educate medical staff on updated regulations and techniques
• Manage projects enhancing clinical processes from screening to discharge

Their multifaceted, analytical role bridges medical delivery with statistical norms to better protect patient safety. These process oriented nurses thrive solving complex cases.

5. Academia: Nurse Educator/Professor

Nursing education represents a profound opportunity to shape the next generation of healthcare providers, advanced practice nurses and future scientists. As classroom professors, clinical instructors or simulation lab faculty, nurse educators and academic researchers build future talent and disseminate cutting-edge insights. Blending teaching skills with up-to-date medical knowledge and often specialty expertise, they prepare students for credentialing exams and careers improving community health outcomes.

Core activities comprise:

• Developing nursing curriculum, syllabi and educational programming
• Leading didactic and clinical course delivery training students
• Advising students needing additional coaching or considering graduate programs
• Continually enhancing instruction based on best pedagogical practices
• Designing simulation scenarios developing clinical competencies
• Evaluating learner competencies and program outcomes
• Maintaining own expertise through research and faculty scholarship

Academic environments also lead research studies published demonstrating the latest evidence-based techniques – fueling discussion and policy action nationwide. Nurse faculty roles offer rewarding flexibility to pursue new projects while advancing professional growth.

6. Medical Device Sales

Sales roles allow nurses to educate the healthcare industry on cutting-edge solutions helping manage illnesses and improve patient outcomes. As medical device sales representatives, nursing professionals liaise between manufacturers and clinical staff using new tools daily – surgeons, specialists, hospital procurement officers, OR directors, physician practice managers or outpatient center administrators.

Core activities include:

• Making sales calls and conducting product demonstrations showcasing medical equipment procurement teams at hospitals/practices
• Educating nurses, doctors and executives on proper device usage, differentiate benefits compared to alternatives
• Gathering market insights from clinicians on unmet needs to input for future product enhancement
• Managing a geographic territory or product line to achieve sales targets
• Maintaining positive customer relationships and negotiating vendor contracts

Device expertise could cover surgical components, diagnostic equipment, digital solutions, home health tools and more. Clinical background paired with an entrepreneurial business development spirit exhilarates successful medical sales talent. Seven figure incomes reward top medical device performers as they enable new technologies improving care delivery nationwide.

7. Entrepreneurship and Business Ownership

Nursing leaders ready to control their own destiny often branch into healthcare entrepreneurship owning independent clinical businesses. By identifying unmet market needs then launching and scaling operations, nurse entrepreneurs directly serve community health priorities. They invent new models and lead dedicated teams delivering personalized nursing services.

Healthcare sectors ripe for new business ventures include:

• Home-based nursing care agencies
• Travel and per-diem staffing agencies
• Specialized telehealth platforms
• Primary care, mental health or concierge medicine clinics
• Medical aesthetics and wellness practices
• Geriatric/dementia focused care facilities
• Healthcare IT and medical device innovations

Owning a practice allows income, equity and impact scalability beyond nursing salaries. Business planning, leadership, customer acquisition and managing financials become learnable competencies carrying opportunities and rewards exceeding corporate ceilings.

The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society offers resources around latest technologies and medical device innovations relevant for nurse entrepreneurs:

8. Nursing Informatics Specialist

Nursing informatics optimizes care delivery through smart technology implementations and data-driven coordination. Specialists advise healthcare systems on automation advancing information sharing, analytics dashboards, patient engagement portals and emerging innovations like wearables and AI.

Daily activities:

• Training clinical staff on new health IT systems adoption
• Mining medical records to derive analytics improving decisions
• Helping design user interfaces enhancing physician workflow
• Ensuring medical devices and data infrastructure remains secured
• Leading projects migrating platforms, servers and networks
• Evaluating technology spending and vendor selection
• Staying updated on healthcare IT and informatics trends

These IT fluent nurses apply analytical capabilities and passion for innovation facilitating digital transformation initiatives modernizing patient experiences across episodes.

9. Health Policy and Advocacy Leader

Health policy leaders research and advocate for legislation and reforms improving public welfare through better access, insurance models, patient protections and nursing scope expansion. They craft positions informed by on-the-ground medical perspectives then influence agendas advancing through governmental bodies, regulators and committees.

Activities include:

• Monitoring and analyzing bills, regulations, reforms
• Forecasting impact of policy changes on community health
• Publishing recommendations on new laws and oversight
• Lobbying legislators and key stakeholders as expert authorities
• Educating elected officials to enhance decision making
• Galvanizing clinician networks as constituents and voices

Their evidence-based testimony and solution-focused approach shapes progressive actions benefiting social determinants of health nationwide.

10. Chief Nursing Officer (CNO)

The Chief Nursing Officer represents the pinnacle nurse executive across large scale hospital networks and national health systems. Accountable for thousands of nursing staff and multi-million dollar budgets, CNOs craft vision guiding enterprise-wide care models, set operational objectives across facilities and drive clinical leadership strategies focused on advancing quality standards nationwide.

Responsibilities include:

• Approving and implementing nursing best practices
• Overseeing facility Chief Nursing Officers (DON)
• Directing nurse training/recruitment for the system
• Advising the CEO, board and C-suite executives
• Collaborating with Chief Medical Officer (CMO) peer
• Ensuring consistent nursing excellence and regulatory compliance

This c-level role requires 15+ years of successive nursing leadership experience paired and a staunch commitment to transforming care. CNOs earn above $250,000 directing field-wide improvements.

Let me know if you would like any sections expanded further! I’m happy to enrich details on these or other nursing MBA career paths.

Further Considerations for Earning an MBA in Nursing

While an MBA opens many lucrative opportunities for nurses, choosing the right program to meet your needs and goals remains critical for return on investment.

When researching MBA in Nursing programs, consider factors like:

• Program Format: Online, part-time, accelerated, and executive MBA programs offer flexibility working around nurse schedules. Full-time programs allow immersive business training and more networking.
• Specializations/Concentrations: Programs concentrating in healthcare management or administration tailor business curriculum to medical industry needs.
• Cost and Financial Aid: Many MBA degrees exceed $60,000 total. Seek scholarships, employer tuition reimbursement, federal aid to ease costs.
• Accreditation Status: Accreditation indicates academic quality standards. AACSB or ACBSP accreditation proves business program rigor.
• Networking Connections: Connections to healthcare executives, administrators, practitioners amplify program value for leadership roles.
• Program Reputation and Rankings: Highly selective, top-ranked MBA in Nursing programs offer the greatest career advancement.

Conclusion

With the healthcare landscape continually evolving, more clinical nurses have felt empowered by using their business prowess. Systems now require that nurses have a minimum business degree to be promoted. Thus nurses who wish to serve in executive leadership roles without an MBA often hit barriers trying to break into the business side of healthcare.

However, by achieving an MBA alongside your BSN degree, you’ll prime yourself for the greatest business and leadership success. Use your business prowess along with outstanding nursing skills to thrive in healthcare administration and management, consultancy, quality oversight, IT, entrepreneurship or countless other fields!

The career possibilities for nurses who earn an MBA are expansive. Just ensure that if you’re a nurse looking for increased authority, influence, and control over your professional trajectory, an MBA remains a pivotal next step on your path to leadership