Start Your Own Nursing Business

There are 2 nursing career doors. Employed, or agency. Both give you a roster that someone has already made, and both have a ceiling you can see from the present location.

There is a third one, and most nurses have not had it described properly.

What the third door is

You are an entrepreneur in the nursing field, running your own practice. Your clients, your standards, your hours, your rates, within your limits. Support workers you supervise in the delivery of the daily supports. The clinical layer is held by you.

There was never a clinical barrier. Nurses have the skills. The barrier is operational, finding clients, recruiting anyone to work with you, contracting, invoicing and chasing payment. The machinery of the business that turns a clinician into an unwilling administrator.

What we supply

There are three things, and the middle one is the difference.

We assist you in locating clients. The platform allows for participants, families, coordinators and providers to look for nurses in their region. Your profile is your shopfront.

We can help you recruit your workers. Finding and verifying support workers, onboarding them. This is where most independent practices get stuck, and it is examined in the next article in this series.

We take care of the contract, the billing and the paperwork. Service contracts are created and stored. Rates are set by you within acceptable guidelines, and are viewable by clients prior to engagement. Payment goes via the platform.

What stays yours

Your registration, your indemnity insurance, your scope and your clinical decisions. The decision of which clients you can work with. Your documentation standards. Your governance relationships with GPs and specialists.

And the good side of what you build.

What you take on

This should not be buried in small print. Your insurance, your leave, your tax and your clinical governance cover are all managed by employment. Independent practice means arranging these intentionally. We carry the client pipeline and the admin. We do not carry your employment entitlements.

The honest path in

The majority of independent practices begin as a side hustle. Current employment maintained, one or two clients collected, the model tested before risk is taken.

Then growth is a dial and not a leap. More availability, more clients, more workers, until it's the job, if that's where you want it to go. Some nurses call four clients perfect. That is success too.

How this plays out in practice

Imagine a nurse who has been working in a hospital for 15 years, is proficient, and is discontented with the staffing schedule, who has considered becoming independent on three occasions and each time stopped at the same question: where would the clients come from.

She sets up a profile on a Sunday evening. That month, two enquiries come in. She adds one to her regular rotations, and finds the clinical side isn't so difficult.

Next steps

Create availability on your profile that is true to life. What one client can tell you will be more than any amount of deliberation.

→  Start your business