Your Career in Nursing: Managing Your Future in the Changing World of Healthcare
By Annette Vallano. New York: Simon & Schuster. $18.95. ISBN: 1-890504-30-0. 357 pages.
As the nursing shortage grows and our Congress acts on funding the Nurse Reinvestment Act, professional opportunities for a rewarding healthcare career abound. Author Annette Vallano has created a book that can build personal confidence levels and inspire lifelong career satisfaction. Vallano is a clinical nurse specialist in private psychiatric mental-health nursing practice, while also serving as an adjunct faculty member at Mercy College in New York. Her nursing career spans more than 25 years, during which she has worked as a direct care provider, nurse manager, and nurse educator; this extensive nursing experience provides an excellent frame of reference for a discussion of the rewards, challenges, and complexities of nursing practice. Contributing authors include Karen Ballard, Director of the Practice and Governmental Affairs Program of the New York Nurses Association, who writes on "The World of Nursing Practice"; Alayne Fitzpatrick, Associate Director of the Undergraduate Nursing Program at Mercy College, who provided the chapter entitled "The Nurse and Technology"; and Mary McGuiness, Director of the Undergraduate Nursing Program at Mercy College, who contributed to the chapter, "The State of Nursing Education."
The text offers strategies for researching the needs of the healthcare marketplace, with advice on developing a personal marketing plan. Self-care techniques via personal development and stress management are discussed, along with real-life profiles of nurses who have adapted their careers. Specific chapters are dedicated to perspectives for the "older nurse," the newly graduated nurse, the second career nurse, and male nurses. The discussions on the characteristics of the 21st century nurse and perspectives on magnet hospital status are particularly interesting. Nurses at all levels of practice-whether novice or advanced practitioner-will find this interesting reading, with valuable insights on shaping their nursing practice into a satisfying career.