mixed results in articles

It appears to be a big month for discussing the nursing career in general nursing journals and magazines. Advance for Nurses highlighted "2010 Nursing Forecast" on their cover, Advance for Nurse Practitioners released their salary results in "Salary Survey Results: good news despite economy," and there's Lippincott's 2010 Nursing Career Directory that came out.

Kind of interesting to read them and come away with mixed reviews. The article Nursing (Job) Shortage discussed the difficulties new nursing grads are having in finding jobs because older nurses aren't retiring in this economy, seasoned nurses aren't venturing out for a position change right now, and the regular workers are picking up extra shifts.

On the flip side, the NP salary results article painted a different impression of the nursing profession. It discussed how healtcare jobs appeared strong, while overall other employment was bleak. It stated that healthcare actually added almost 600,000 positions and the overall NP salary increased yet again (up by >$8000).

Perhaps the difference is in being a new grad vs. already in a position. Perhaps the difference is between finding an RN job vs. an NP job. Maybe there's some bias in the articles. I'm not trying to compare apples and oranges. But I did feel there was a discrepancy among the articles in the overall outlook and impression of where our discipline stands in this economy right now.

From my standpoint, I don't feel largely impacted by the economy. I heard our hospital did a hiring-freeze, which has now been lifted. We did miss our annual pay raise, which I suppose does count for something. But I don't know of anyone who lost a job in our hospital or suffered a pay cut or cut in hours. I suppose even if I took the position that nursing has hit hard times, I have no doubt it will bounce back. The old are getting older, and there will be more and more of them to take care of. Nursing will be needed.