Nurses satisfied at work now, but fearful

Seventy-six percent of U.S. nurses say they are satisfied with their jobs, but 72 percent fear future workload increases and liabilities, a survey says. Vital Signs 2012: A National Nursing Attitudes and Outlook Report highlights survey findings conducted by Jackson Healthcare, a healthcare staffing company, in conjunction with Jackson Nurse Professionals found only 5 percent of nurses currently were very dissatisfied with their work. However, those who were unhappy tended to be younger nurses ages 25-34 compared with nurses ages 65 or older. Male nurses also were more likely to be unhappy compared to female nurses. "Nursing is a great profession at the moment," Richard L. Jackson, chairman of Jackson Healthcare, said in a statement. "It provides good pay, rewarding work and a nice balance between personal and professional life, but with so many seniors approaching retirement in the next 10 years, a potential nursing shortage, more litigation in the medical profession and a potential explosion of newly insured patients, nurses fear the future and changes coming to their profession." The survey also found in the next three to five years, 49 percent of nurses said they planned to keep their current jobs, while 13 percent said they would seek a leadership position in nursing, 11 percent said they would return to school, 10 percent would like to teach nursing, and 9 percent said they would like to transition to a nurse practitioner role. The online survey of 969 nurses was conducted from October to November. It has a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points.