Your Career in Nursing: Manage Your Future in the Changing World of Healthcare - Book Review

AORN Journal,  Dec, 2003  by Royceann D. Brechtel

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Annette T. Vallano 2002, 357 pp $18 paperback

This book offers career guidance for nurses of all ages and in all stages of their nursing careers and presents readers with myriad resources for updating and upgrading nursing skills. Throughout the book, the author encourages nurses to jump hurdles created by the nursing shortage, managed care, and changes in technology by empowering themselves with more education. Lively insights into what it is like to be a male nurse, a new graduate nurse, or even a second-career nurse help readers identify with those nontraditional caregivers and empathize with their experiences. As an accomplished and seasoned masters degree-prepared army nurse, the author presents opportunities and possibilities in nursing based on her personal experience.

The book is divided into two parts. In the first half of the book, each chapter speaks to a specific group of nurses (eg, older nurses, new graduate nurses). This format allows readers to find the career group they belong in and with which they identify. Chapter one opens by speaking to all readers about nurses in the twenty-first century. With the appearance of cellular telephones, fax machines, and e-mail, the author says, communication barriers that nurses previously perceived have been eased abruptly. Technology now used in hospitals includes bedside charting on a laptop computer and a vital-sign machine programmed to check vital signs at scheduled intervals. For twenty-first century nurses, access to resources and information has increased exponentially, thanks to the Internet. A computer-savvy nurse no longer needs to flip through textbook pages to find medical information. Simply by clicking on professional medical web sites, health care professionals can find the answer to almost any medical question. The book does an excellent job of providing web site references (ie, Uniform Resource Locators [URLs]), which are listed throughout the text. These URLs include sites for nursing organizations, skill tutoring and updates, educational opportunities, and credentialing.

The author addresses problems such as stress and burnout and encourages readers to thrive on change and practice balancing crisis and opportunity. She says that when nurses can depend on the three-legged stool (ie, the surgeon-nurse-anesthesia care provider team) for nursing success, the quality of their career lives will improve. Vallano encourages nurses to inquire about and promote Magnet certification at their hospitals and discusses the nursing shortage projection and ways nurses can be proactive about it. She also explores in detail available levels of graduate and post-graduate study. This section contains an excellent list of these programs and contact information for each.

The second part of the book discusses converting a nursing career into You, Inc. In this highly motivational section, the author shows readers how to develop and implement a plan to market themselves and their careers by engaging in professional networking, career planning, market research, and interview practice.

The book has some outstanding features. Although it is long, given the limited subject matter, the book provides a quick and smooth read. Resources are plentiful. In addition to the lists of URLs and contacts in the first two chapters, the book includes 60 pages of appendices containing contact information for resources on every topic imaginable in a nursing career. Nurses from many different backgrounds can benefit from this book. For those interested in gaining survival skills during this overwhelming time in the health care revolution, this book is a must.

This book is available from Kaplan Publishing, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020, http://www .simonsays.com/subs/apps/search result.cfm?areaid=33.

ROYCEANN D. BRECHTEL

RN, BSN, BC

STAFF NURSE

EAST JEFFERSON GENERAL HOSPITAL

METAIRIE, LA

COPYRIGHT 2003 Association of Operating Room Nurses, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group