Are You An Expert?

Are you a Nursing Expert? How do you know if you are expert or not? This is certainly not one of those qualities that you feel like you ever have until one day someone incidentally calls you the expert. At what point do you become and expert and how do you know when your cross over into expert-ness?

Are you a Nursing Expert? How do you know if you are expert or not? This is certainly not one of those qualities that you feel like you ever have until one day someone incidentally calls you the expert. At what point do you become and expert and how do you know when your cross over into expert-ness?

Well there is the general aspect of time. Even if you do absolutely nothing with your time but watch TV hour by hour, you could essentially be considered an expert in cable surfing.

Prolonged exposure to any one thing will provide you with a definite level of expertise. This is not to suggest you know everything, no one ever does, but your experience in whatever form that takes is an essential component of expertise.

The second level of expertise is about being a reliable and credible source on a consistent basis. As you work as a nurse you will continue to build an extensive knowledge base.

You may not recognize yourself as having expertise, but when people start asking your opinion on a repeated basis, you can be sure it is because they believe you have knowledge in a particular area of study.

You can be sure your patients also regard you as having expertise, even if you lack confidence in yourself.

Your training, credentials and professional licensure provide you with qualifications to be an expert to lay people. Being ambitious and studying your area of interest will provide you with subject matter expertise that will eventually be acknowledged by your peers.

One of the best ways to exert yourself as an expert is to publish, present at any conference in the form of posters or speaking engagements and to be involved in committees.

Your involvement in any of these activities should help you transition your perception of yourself and others as an expert.

If you have been validated by peer reviewed journals and speaking engagements, then you don’t need to spend a lot of time trying to prove you are an expert, there is an assumption you are the expert.

The next question you should be considering is how does your expertise benefit you and not just those people around you? When you carve out your niche and brand your expertise, you have the perfect formula for monetizing your knowledge.

If you have ever dreamed of having your own business, defining yourself in an organized, structured way will put you in the best position, you can work harder on just providing people with what they need from you. There will always be people who know more than you, but you know more than other people.

So on this continuum, we are all experts relative to someone else. Once you understand this concept, you will spend less time worrying about whether you are an expert and more time on designing a business plan.